From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.2 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: f43e6,9a0ff0bffdf63657 X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public X-Google-Thread: fac41,9a0ff0bffdf63657 X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,4b06f8f15f01a568 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,9a0ff0bffdf63657 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public From: reilly@zeta.org.au (Andrew Reilly) Subject: Re: Software landmines (loops) Date: 1998/09/01 Message-ID: <6sff74$q0s@gurney.reilly.home>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 386655716 References: <6qfhri$gs7$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <35cb8058.645630787@news.ne.mediaone.net> <902934874.2099.0.nnrp-10.c246a717@news.demon.co.uk> <6r1glm$bvh$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <6r9f8h$jtm$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <6renh8$ga7$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <6rf59b$2ud$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <6rfra4$rul$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <35DBDD24.D003404D@calfp.co.uk> <6sbuod$fra$1@hirame.wwa.com> <6sebjr$b69$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Organization: Andrew and Catherine Reilly at home Mime-Version: 1.0 Reply-To: reilly@zeta.org.au Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel,comp.object,comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-09-01T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <6sebjr$b69$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, dennison@telepath.com writes: > I gave up mangling my code to make while loops years ago for just the reason > Matthew spoke of. Occasionally when I make a middle-exited loop I will try to > make a while loop out of it, but I almost always delete the code and go back > to the middle-exited loop. If an algorithm really is a middle-exited loop, > you just confuse things (thereby making the code harder to understand) by > tring to force a different structure on it. For me, the extra code is a prime > source of errors as well. Just out of interest, (and loop constructs are a significant interest to me), what field of human endeavour do you find yourself supporting (coding for) that frequently requires middle-exit loops? I mostly do numerics, and find myself wanting something much simpler than the current styles, with a simple integer iteration count. A bit like the old Fortran do loops. Even having to name and declare a loop variable is overhead (semantic baggage) I'd avoid if I could. -- Andrew Reilly Reilly@zeta.org.au