Re: Loops (was Re: do { quit; } else { })

On 22/04/2025 02:22, Keith Thompson wrote:

bart <bc@freeuk.com> writes:

On 22/04/2025 00:12, Keith Thompson wrote:

bart <bc@freeuk.com> writes:

On 21/04/2025 22:06, Waldek Hebisch wrote:

bart <bc@freeuk.com> wrote:

>
t iteration goes over all elements in the hash table.

    BTW2: When looking at 'for' loop you are supposed to see pattern,
without need to track all steps.

>
That's one of the disadvantages of using the same, often
/inappropriate/ keyword for every kind of pattern.

You think it's inappropriate.
Would your objections go away if a different keyword were used?

>
I already said that I would have prefered if 'while' was used.
>
Then either 'for' wasn't used, or was used for the kind of for-loop
that is common in other languages.

 So you wouldn't mind if C had both `while (expr)` and
`while (expr1; expr2; expr3)`, with the latter having the semantics
of C's current for loop?

At least the keyword would now be 'appropriate'.

But that doesn't answer my question.  You'd prefer "while", but would
using "while" rather than "for" resolve your objections?

If a separate 'for' didn't exist, then there'd be mostly the same problems, but it would be slightly less annoying: at least there is no pretence that linked-list traversal is anything to with iterating from A to B.
But ideally 'for' would exist and be used only for simple iterations, even if it was the same for(a;b;c) style as now. Then when you see 'for....', you will know instantly what you're looking at.

For example, in my post to which you replied, I discussed at
some length how I like to split for loops if they're too long.
You snipped that discussion *and then* insinuated that I don't care
about complex loops written on one line.  Please stop doing things
like that.

Well I care about it too, and I would write such things more sensibly as well. But so what? Most code I see tends to be badly formatted. For-headers are not split up unless they're long enough to overflow the line.
It's something about the culture behind 'for' that encourages poor coding style.