On 10/09/2021 00:47, Terry Reedy wrote: > even one loop is guaranteed.) "do-while" or "repeat-until is even rarer > since fractional-loop include this as a special case.
Is there any empirical evidence to support this? Or is it just a case of using the tools that are available? In my experience of using Pascal (and much later with Delphi) that I used repeat loops at least as often as while loops, possibly more. But using Python and to a lesser extent C (which has a rather horrible do/while) construct I use while loops (often with an if-break) simply because that's what the language offers. So is it the case that the "need" for repeat loops is rare, simply a result of there being no native repeat loop available? After all we could have done without a for loop too and just used a while loop for everything (as was done in Oberon(?) ) Would we then state that the use of for loops was rare? But I would hope that any empirical research would look at the wider function of the loop and its purpose rather than merely analyzing the syntax and keywords. -- Alan G Author of the Learn to Program web site http://www.alan-g.me.uk/ http://www.amazon.com/author/alan_gauld Follow my photo-blog on Flickr at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alangauldphotos -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
