while true: !!!

Carsten Geckeler nospam at no.spam
Mon Dec 18 17:32:23 EST 2000


On Mon, 18 Dec 2000, Steve Lamb wrote:

> On Mon, 18 Dec 2000 13:36:27 +0100 (CET), Carsten Geckeler <nospam at no.spam>
> wrote:
> >Anyway it's a very common idiom.  But the point is that using true and false
> >would make the code more readable in cases where it's not clear, that the
> >value is used as a boolean value later.  E.g:
> 
> [Example of if conditions snipped]
> 
>     You're mixing examples.  I doubt that anyone has a problem with storing a
> value in an appropriately named variable.  However, how does that address
> having true equate to false?  That would be the requirement of having "while
> true:" and then terminating the loop with assigning "true = 0" thus making
> that consition false.  Meanwhile the very valid break would go unused for the
> exact purpose that it was designed for, breaking out of a loop.

Sorry, but that was not my point.  Of course, defining true = 0 would be a
bad way of ending the loop.  In case you use true and false variable,
those should be defined to 1 and 0 and never be changed.  The break
statement is definetly the best way to terminate a loop.  I just said that
`while true' would be more readable and clear than `while 1'.  By the way,
explain a newbie that -1 is true. ;)

Cheers, Carsten
-- 
Carsten Geckeler:  carsten dot geckeler at gmx dot de
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