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Postings from December 2004
Austin Hastings writes:
> The other concern is idiom. Using C<for> suggests "start at the
> beginning, continue to the end". OTOH, using C<while> is a little
> "weaker" -- "keep doing this until it's time to stop". Obviously they'll
> usually be used in the same way:
>
> for =<> {...} vs. while (<>) {...}
>
> This seems a subtle concern, and maybe it's just my latent fear of
> change making me uncomfortable, but I actually *think* in english -- not
> that it does much good -- and this isn't how I think.
I think that C<for> reads much better than C<while> for English-ness.
Having taught Perl 5 beginners that C<foreach> can be used to iterated
over each item in a list, many of them then instinctively try to use the
same keyword for iterating over each line in a file. (Which of course
works -- albeit inefficiently and umidiomatically -- so they don't
bother looking any further.)
To me C<for> makes sense when you've got a pile of stuff you're
intending to process (such as array items or lines in a file), and
C<while> makes sense when you're waiting for a condition (such as the
user correctly entering her/his password) and you couldn't possibly know
in advance how many times you'll be looping.
Smylers
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