Friday Finking: Contorted loops
Peter J. Holzer
hjp-python at hjp.at
Sat Sep 11 10:41:59 EDT 2021
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!"
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20210911/c789d841/attachment.sig>
More information about the Python-list
mailing list