Useless for

Oscar Luis Vera Perez

Hi, I saw this some time ago:

for(int i = 0; i < 2; i++)
{
if(i==0)
//Do something
if(i==1)
//Do something else
}

this is pretty much a horror

BadKarma

Your are correct, he/she should have used a switch instead of the if statements. Like this:

for(int i= 0; i < 2; i++)
{
  switch(i)
  {
    case 0:
      // do something
      break;
    case 1:
      // do something else
      break;
  };
}

Learn from the mistakes of others, you may not live long enough to make them all yourself.

PIEBALDconsult

Probably, but do //Do something and //Do something else alter the value of i?

_Superman_

I guess there is no need for a loop at all. Nothing is being repeated here.

«_Superman_» I love work. It gives me something to do between weekends.

PIEBALDconsult

«_Superman_» wrote:

Nothing is being repeated here.

We don't know that.

supercat9

Such code may be entirely reasonable and practical if there is common code before or after the case-specific code, and if variable scoping would make it impractical for the common code to be pulled out into a separate routine. My guess would be that there had at some point been some code which was executed every time through the loop, but that such code has been eliminated leaving the now-useless loop structure behind.

gspyacc

This is for sure a Coding Horror, a good one. Does a loop for only two predefined values. If i (counter) is changed inside for, this is another coding horror!. And guess what, the developer is interesting for the values 0 and 1. (reminds you something like true/false maybe?)

JasonPSage

I agree with the poster who said it depends. If this is the loop's entire construct - yes I think it's not ideal. (Not a horror though). I would just have two statements "do something" and "do something else" and MAYBE block them in braces to be clear its a "unit" or make a function if warranted. If the person planned to expand on this loop - where it cycled thru ten iterations, but was suppose to do something special for iteration 1 and 2, then a case statement might be ideal.. still not a horror. --Jason P Sage

Know way to many languages... master of none!

che3358

Do something absolutely is critical here to know whether it is horrible or not.

The following sample indicates what you saw is not horrible:

See, I have two controls: Label0 and TextBox1. I can assign values to them:

for (int i = 0; i < 2; i++)
{
if (i == 0)
{
Label lable = (Label)this.FindControl("Label" + i.ToString());
if (lable != null)
lable.Text = "Test Label " + i.ToString();
}

if (i == 1)
{
   TextBox txt = (TextBox)this.FindControl("TextBox" + i.ToString());
   if (txt != null)
     txt.Text = "Test TextBox " + i.ToString();
}

}

See it? It is not a usual way, but, not as horrible as you saw.

modified on Monday, March 2, 2009 4:04 PM

Julia Washburn

I've been reading programming books for quite a while now, and I agree this is totally useless even for explaining the syntax of the if statement. For goodness sake couldn't they write something like this at least:

for(int i = 0; i < 2; i++)
{
if(i==0)
Console.WriteLine("This is a zero");
if(i==1)
Console.WriteLine("This is a one");
}

So you could kind of understand that the code supposed to do something. In this case write something to the screen. And if you wrote this into your visual studio it would actually work!!!

Oscar Luis Vera Perez

The fact is that it was on a "finished" code, so the programmer didn't want to expand it. I agree with the idea that if you have a two iterations for and have two different actions on each, then there shouldn't be any for at all!

Electron Shepherd

PIEBALDconsult wrote:

Probably, but do //Do something and //Do something else alter the value of i?

I don't see how they can...

Server and Network Monitoring

Luc Pattyn

// do something else could be:
{
i=i-2;
Console.WriteLine("once more");
}

:)

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dojohansen

I believe the point was that without the loop and the if's the (equivalent) code becomes // do something // do something else which of course is simply normal program flow! So the whole looping business seems a bit convoluted.

IglesiasP · modified on Monday, March 2, 2009 4:04 PM

Jokin' i suppose... :laugh: