Friday Finking: Contorted loops

[Peter J. Holzer]

On 2021-09-10 12:26:24 +0100, Alan Gauld via Python-list wrote:
> On 10/09/2021 00:47, Terry Reedy wrote:
> > even one loop is guaranteed.)  "do-while" or "repeat-until is even rarer 
> > since fractional-loop include this as a special case.
> 
> Is there any empirical evidence to support this?
> Or is it just a case of using the tools that are available?
> In my experience of using Pascal (and much later with Delphi)
> that I used repeat loops at least as often as while loops,
> possibly more.
> 
> But using Python and to a lesser extent C (which has a
> rather horrible do/while) construct

How is C's do/while loop more horrible than Pascal's repeat/until? They
seem almost exactly the same to me (the differences I see are the
inverted condition (debatable which is better) and the added block
delimiters (which I actually like)).


> So is it the case that the "need" for repeat loops is
> rare, simply a result of there being no native repeat
> loop available?

A tiny non-representative data point:

In an old collection of small C programs of mine I find:

35 regular for loops
28 while loops
2 infinite for loops
1 "infinite" for loop (i.e. it exits somewhere in the middle)
0 do/while loops.

So even though do/while loops are available in C (and I don't find them
horrible) I apparently found very little use for them (I'm sure if I
look through more of my C programs I'll find a few examples, but this
small samples shows they are rare.

        hp

-- 
   _  | Peter J. Holzer    | Story must make more sense than reality.
|_|_) |                    |
| |   | hjp at hjp.at         |    -- Charles Stross, "Creative writing
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ |       challenge!"
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