clt@pur-phy (Carrick Talmadge) (10/08/88)
Here is something I've always wondered about with regards to C.
Why is it that the syntax for do-while is
do statement; while (expression) ;
rather than what I'd think would be more useful:
do statement; while (expression) statement;
where "statement;" could of course be a compound statement. I've seen
this more general construct in other languages, so it seems like it could
be done. I'm curious to hear if anyone has heard a rationale for why it
was left out of the language.
Carrick Talmadge
clt@newton.physics.purdue.edu
-------
The problem with this country is, if you shoot/hang/fire one bureaucrat,
they hire two more to take his place...gwyn@smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) (10/08/88)
The
loop stuff
until condition
more_stuff
pool
construct is the most general form of loop. It would be useful
if it were the ONLY loop construct in an Algol-like language.
However, C has several loop constructs for reasons of convenience,
and the exit from the middle of a loop is easily accomplished:
for(;;) {
stuff
if(condition) break;
more_stuff
}
so that there is no real need to add such a construct. Save it
for a new programming language (D?).