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In most computer programming languages, a while loop is a control flow statement that allows code to be executed repeatedly based on a given Boolean condition. The while loop can be thought of as a repeating if statement .
In the C programming language, Duff's device is a way of manually implementing loop unrolling by interleaving two syntactic constructs of C: the do-while loop and a switch statement. Its discovery is credited to Tom Duff in November 1983, when Duff was working for Lucasfilm and used it to speed up a real-time animation program.
Infinite loops can be implemented using other control flow constructs. Most commonly, in unstructured programming this is jump back up (goto), while in structured programming this is an indefinite loop (while loop) set to never end, either by omitting the condition or explicitly setting it to true, as while (true) .... Some languages have ...
Do while loops check the condition after the block of code is executed. This control structure can be known as a post-test loop. This means the do-while loop is an exit-condition loop. However a while loop will test the condition before the code within the block is executed.
The following C code examples illustrate two threads that share a global integer i. The first thread uses busy-waiting to check for a change in the value of i : #include <pthread.h> #include <stdatomic.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <unistd.h> /* i is global, so it is visible to all functions.
At the level of loops, this is a break statement (terminate the loop) or continue statement (terminate the current iteration, proceed with next iteration). In structured programming, these can be replicated by adding additional branches or tests, but for returns from nested code this can add significant complexity.
Off-by-one errors are common in using the C library because it is not consistent with respect to whether one needs to subtract 1 byte – functions like fgets() and strncpy will never write past the length given them (fgets() subtracts 1 itself, and only retrieves (length − 1) bytes), whereas others, like strncat will write past the length given them.
However, infinite loops can sometimes be used purposely, often with an exit from the loop built into the loop implementation for every computer language, but many share the same basic structure and/or concept. The While loop and the For loop are the two most common types of conditional loops in most programming languages.