while(true) is not fun
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for (;;)
{
Console.WriteLine("this, and while(true) loops, are an abomination ... as evil as using goto");// break; // oh, go on forever}
but, writing this was fun :wtf: suggested reading: [^]
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
well, my peers, and mentors, i intended this post as a tongue-in-cheek jiggery-pokery i hoped would not be taken seriously ... back in the days some of us fossils can remember, languages, like Fortran, had simple control structures; you had to use 'goto to exit a DO loop; that, and BASIC, are the context in which Dijkstra's famous hyperbolic essay took aim [^]. in today's high-level languages, like C#, the underlying use of jumps/gotos is abstracted away for very good reasons. if i see a while(true) in C#, i call that sloppy code that lacks documentation, and, is less maintainable, because you've got to study the interior code to figure out what, if anything, makes it stop. and, it never returns? [^]
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
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suggested reading: [^] :)
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
state machines are a good argument for gotos. It is impossible as far as I know, to implement every scenario possible for a deterministic finite automata based state machine without using either array based tables, or goto statements. while/for/etc don't cut it because the flow can become too complicated for those constructs. There was a Knuth paper you linked to earlier** that presented a defense of goto that is similar to my defense of it just above. ** here's the code from that paper (Example 1):
for i := 1 step 1 until m do.
if A[i] = x then go to found fi;
not found: i := re+l; m := i;
A[i] := x; B[i] := 0;
found: B[i] := B[i]+I;rewritten without goto it's even worse (Example 1a):
i:=1;
while i < m and A[i] # x do i :-- i+1;
if i > m then ra := i; A[i] := x; B[i] ::= 0 fi;
B[i] := B[i]+I;Real programmers use butterflies
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state machines are a good argument for gotos. It is impossible as far as I know, to implement every scenario possible for a deterministic finite automata based state machine without using either array based tables, or goto statements. while/for/etc don't cut it because the flow can become too complicated for those constructs. There was a Knuth paper you linked to earlier** that presented a defense of goto that is similar to my defense of it just above. ** here's the code from that paper (Example 1):
for i := 1 step 1 until m do.
if A[i] = x then go to found fi;
not found: i := re+l; m := i;
A[i] := x; B[i] := 0;
found: B[i] := B[i]+I;rewritten without goto it's even worse (Example 1a):
i:=1;
while i < m and A[i] # x do i :-- i+1;
if i > m then ra := i; A[i] := x; B[i] ::= 0 fi;
B[i] := B[i]+I;Real programmers use butterflies
i think you just hoisted my attempt to play Hamlet on his own petard :omg:
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
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i think you just hoisted my attempt to play Hamlet on his own petard :omg:
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
I'm all kinds of no fun today, sorry. :~
Real programmers use butterflies
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Microsoft's CodeDOM renderer for C# spits out loops like that. I've also seen Microsoft code that does it this way in the reference source for the .NET BCL. As far as the while, I prefer:
var done = false;
while(!done) {
// do work
}But every C# dev should know how to write
while(true) { }Real programmers use butterflies
Just a preference. But yes, guilty.
var HellHasFrozen
..
while (!HellHasFrozen)If you see it, good chance I wrote that code. Also (!MurlocsAttacking), used in handlers for multiple unknown exceptions. I WarCraft too much.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Just a preference. But yes, guilty.
var HellHasFrozen
..
while (!HellHasFrozen)If you see it, good chance I wrote that code. Also (!MurlocsAttacking), used in handlers for multiple unknown exceptions. I WarCraft too much.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
probably my silliest function name currently in use is _HasExtraNonsense() because the alternative (spelling out what "nonsense" means) would yield a function name as wide as the screen
Real programmers use butterflies
-
for (;;)
{
Console.WriteLine("this, and while(true) loops, are an abomination ... as evil as using goto");// break; // oh, go on forever}
but, writing this was fun :wtf: suggested reading: [^]
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
Essential in embedded coding. Pretty much every non-OS based embedded app will have a while(1) or similar in the main code. Ditto for an OS, you can't schedule the scheduler (well, you *can*, but...).
-
for (;;)
{
Console.WriteLine("this, and while(true) loops, are an abomination ... as evil as using goto");// break; // oh, go on forever}
but, writing this was fun :wtf: suggested reading: [^]
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
Works better than any break point...
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for (;;)
{
Console.WriteLine("this, and while(true) loops, are an abomination ... as evil as using goto");// break; // oh, go on forever}
but, writing this was fun :wtf: suggested reading: [^]
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
const DucksFloat = true; : : while(DucksFloat) { }
Nothing succeeds like a budgie without teeth.
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suggested reading: [^] :)
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
aha... and?
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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for (;;)
{
Console.WriteLine("this, and while(true) loops, are an abomination ... as evil as using goto");// break; // oh, go on forever}
but, writing this was fun :wtf: suggested reading: [^]
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
The problem with any remark, comment, oneliner, if it gets overused, a number of things happen - they get a life of their own. Everybody starts to parrot this "wisdom" because of how good it sounds - the use of the term gets disconnected from the original meaning, because it is an easy, and thus lazy comment to make - instead of being helpful, or any kind of contribution to the quality and ethics of software engineering, it becomes the catchphrase of choice for individuals who want their opinion to be taken for "superior" at all cost. What everybody *should* have done instead, is work out why, or why not, they are using a particular construct, and show real professionalism that way, rather than faking it through gratuitous remarks that sit well with the boss.
-
for (;;)
{
Console.WriteLine("this, and while(true) loops, are an abomination ... as evil as using goto");// break; // oh, go on forever}
but, writing this was fun :wtf: suggested reading: [^]
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
for (;;)
{
Console.WriteLine("this, and while(true) loops, are an abomination ... as evil as using goto");goto get\_me\_out\_of\_here;}
get_me_out_of_here:
Now you have it all :laugh:
-
for (;;)
{
Console.WriteLine("this, and while(true) loops, are an abomination ... as evil as using goto");// break; // oh, go on forever}
but, writing this was fun :wtf: suggested reading: [^]
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
In the development phase while(true) is fine and clear. When you are clear as to what conditions must be met to break out of the loop, we can set up a meaningful boolean eg while(NoReliablStatus) or whatever. Replacing while(true) with while(notdone) is a waste of time.
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const DucksFloat = true; : : while(DucksFloat) { }
Nothing succeeds like a budgie without teeth.
"She's a duck !"
-
for (;;)
{
Console.WriteLine("this, and while(true) loops, are an abomination ... as evil as using goto");// break; // oh, go on forever}
but, writing this was fun :wtf: suggested reading: [^]
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
What about embedded systems? A lot of embedded systems have initialisation code and then the remainder of the system is handled in a single while loop, that's more or less standard practise
-
for (;;)
{
Console.WriteLine("this, and while(true) loops, are an abomination ... as evil as using goto");// break; // oh, go on forever}
but, writing this was fun :wtf: suggested reading: [^]
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
When I need an infinite loop, I do it accidentally.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013 -
for (;;)
{
Console.WriteLine("this, and while(true) loops, are an abomination ... as evil as using goto");// break; // oh, go on forever}
but, writing this was fun :wtf: suggested reading: [^]
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
It's probably been said, but try to do embedded software with out infinite loops. The only time I have seen goto used in the wild was in a avionics control software!
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state machines are a good argument for gotos. It is impossible as far as I know, to implement every scenario possible for a deterministic finite automata based state machine without using either array based tables, or goto statements. while/for/etc don't cut it because the flow can become too complicated for those constructs. There was a Knuth paper you linked to earlier** that presented a defense of goto that is similar to my defense of it just above. ** here's the code from that paper (Example 1):
for i := 1 step 1 until m do.
if A[i] = x then go to found fi;
not found: i := re+l; m := i;
A[i] := x; B[i] := 0;
found: B[i] := B[i]+I;rewritten without goto it's even worse (Example 1a):
i:=1;
while i < m and A[i] # x do i :-- i+1;
if i > m then ra := i; A[i] := x; B[i] ::= 0 fi;
B[i] := B[i]+I;Real programmers use butterflies
Knuth's "Example 1" problem using structured statements for alternate loop exits:
for i in 1:m do
// main loop body; may contain any number of statements:
while A[i] != x; // premature loop termination if x is found
exitwhile // do this on premature loop termination, i.e. "found"
B[i]++;exitfor // do this if loop reaches end of (valid) A[], i.e. "not found"
A[i] := x;
B[i] := 1;
m = i; // new search limit for subsequent x searchesendfor
I really miss this construct; I found it truly useful, but have seen it in a single language only, 30+ years ago. Note that both the exitwhile and exitfor clauses are within the scope of the loop statement, with access to the loop control variable and any other variable declared within the loop. (This is essential to the usability of the construct.)
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Microsoft's CodeDOM renderer for C# spits out loops like that. I've also seen Microsoft code that does it this way in the reference source for the .NET BCL. As far as the while, I prefer:
var done = false;
while(!done) {
// do work
}But every C# dev should know how to write
while(true) { }Real programmers use butterflies
honey the codewitch wrote:
But every C# dev should know how to write
while(true) { }while (true)
{
Console.WriteLine("C# is better than Javascript!");
}Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
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for (;;)
{
Console.WriteLine("this, and while(true) loops, are an abomination ... as evil as using goto");goto get\_me\_out\_of\_here;}
get_me_out_of_here:
Now you have it all :laugh:
