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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fac41,9a0ff0bffdf63657 X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,9a0ff0bffdf63657 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,4b06f8f15f01a568 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: f43e6,9a0ff0bffdf63657 X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public From: dennison@telepath.com Subject: Re: Software landmines (loops) Date: 1998/09/01 Message-ID: <6sh2j5$jnl$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 386790318 References: <6qfhri$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$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <6sff74$q0s@gurney.reilly.home> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x2.dejanews.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 204.48.27.130 Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion X-Article-Creation-Date: Tue Sep 01 15:07:17 1998 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel,comp.object,comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.05 [en] (WinNT; I) Date: 1998-09-01T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <6sff74$q0s@gurney.reilly.home>, reilly@zeta.org.au wrote: > In article <6sebjr$b69$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, > dennison@telepath.com writes: > > 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? Well, I'll go through the middle-exited loops on code I'm working on now... 4 Parsing loops 2 Sorting loops 2 Searching loops 1 Token analysis loop 1 Error handling 2 lexicagraphical comparison loops 1 lexicagraphical incrementer > 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. I suppose that would be useful if you wanted a "repeat the following code 1051 times" loop. But its very rare I need to do something like that w/o also needing to use the iteration count as an index. In fact, if its really simple, a lot of times you can write it as one array assignment operation in Ada. For instance, the insertion operation in one of my sorting loops is: Rows(1..Sortee) := Rows(1..Sorted-1) & Rows(Sortee) & Rows(Sorted..Sortee-1); -- T.E.D. -----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==----- http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp Create Your Own Free Member Forum