The rap against "while True:" loops

Gabriel Genellina gagsl-py2 at yahoo.com.ar
Sun Oct 11 23:14:30 EDT 2009


En Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:01:47 -0300, RDrewD <drewlist at gmail.com> escribió:

> On Oct 11, 6:46 pm, Philip Semanchuk <phi... at semanchuk.com> wrote:
>> On Oct 11, 2009, at 5:51 PM, bartc wrote:
>> > Mensanator wrote:
>> >> On Oct 10, 3:15 pm, kj <no.em... at please.post> wrote:
>> >>> I'm coaching a group of biologists on basic Python scripting. One
>> >>> of my charges mentioned that he had come across the advice never
>> >>> to use loops beginning with "while True". Of course, that's one
>> >>> way to start an infinite loop, but this seems hardly a sufficient
>> >>> reason to avoid the construct altogether, as long as one includes
>> >>> an exit that is always reached. (Actually, come to think of it,
>> >>> there are many situations in which a bona fide infinite loops
>> >>> (typically within a try: block) is the required construct, e.g.
>> >>> when implementing an event loop.)
>>
>> >>> I use "while True"-loops often, and intend to continue doing this
>> >>> "while True", but I'm curious to know: how widespread is the
>> >>> injunction against such loops? Has it reached the status of "best
>> >>> practice"?
>>
>> >> If you know this "exit that is always reached",
>> >> why do you pretend not to know it by writing
>> >> "while True"?
>>
>> > When I'm starting to code something I haven't yet fully worked out,  
>> > it often starts with an infinite loop like this, until the body is  
>> > coded and I've figured out how to escape from it.
>>
>> > At the end if may or may not be tidied up, depending on how much  
>> > work it is to reconcile several possible break points into a single  
>> > terminating condition to be place at one end, and whether that is  
>> > likely to break or obfuscate a currently working program.
>>
>> > But if it's never going to be seen by the brigade who hate all  
>> > break, exit, goto and multiple return statements, then I won't bother.
>>
>> I think you bring up a good point. I think "while True" has some  
>> legitimate uses (like event loops), and I don't mind seeing it there.  
>> What I don't like is goto, and to a lesser extent break, exit, and  
>> multiple returns. I don't find too many cases where they're the  
>> clearest way to express things. And where one sees a "while True", one  
>> can almost always find a "break" or two lurking in the loop.
>>
>> IMHO, break, goto, etc. have their place, but they're ripe for abuse  
>> which leads to spaghetti code. Since the OP is teaching non-
>> programmers to write code, I think the potential for abuse is  
>> especially important to keep in mind. I'd think that teaching them a  
>> tool like "while True" would encourage the "code now, design later"  
>> trap that even experienced programmers -- including myself --  
>> sometimes fall into. Writing "while <condition>" instead forces one to  
>> stop at the beginning of the loop and think at least a little about  
>> exactly what it's meant to accomplish.
>
> I was a bit surprised that nobody in this discussion so far bantered
> around the phrase "loop invariant", but then I looked in
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_invariant and found it was draped in
> so much formalism that it's sure to put off all but the most dedicated
> of Computer Science fans.   I haven't been in college in 35 years, so
> I'll admit to being rusty on this, but as I remember it, any time we
> wrote a loop, we were expected to be able to say what the loop
> invariant is.
>
> my_prissy_little_indicator_variable = true
> while (my_prissy_little_indicator_variable){
>     <body>
> }
> isn't satisfying because it doesn't guard the <body> with any
> assurance that the loop invariant will be true before you enter into
> that block of code.

I think you meant the other way; the above is the simplest loop case, with  
the test at the start. A loop with the test at the end, on the other hand,  
is slightly harder to prove correct (but not much).

As an example, Ada has a general loop construct like this:

loop
   ...
   exit when some_condition;
   ...
end loop;

and LOTS of work has been done in proving correctness of Ada programs, so  
having the test at the start/middle/end of the loop is not an obstacle for  
formal verification.

-- 
Gabriel Genellina




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