Thread: Breaking out of a While loop with Nested If statements

You can change the loop to be
for (i=0;i<j && x == 1 ;i++)

Or just use the break statement.

Originally Posted by Dave11

nobody uses while loop. yes , I know I'll get crucified here with this - but it's true. while is uses very rarely, with very sparse situations , like wait for a socket to open , wait for something to finish download etc. almost 99% of the time you can exchange while loop with for loop .

You contradicted yourself

Originally Posted by Dave11

for loop is a smarter decision because you know exactly how you start , what happens incrementally every loop and when to finish , it is also more readable.

Rather, if your loop satisfies these conditions, then you should choose to use a for loop. If not, then perhaps a while loop or some other construct would be a "smarter decision". Choosing the appropriate loop construct makes your code "more readable", e.g., if you use a for loop when a while loop is more appropriate, then your code would not be "more readable".

Originally Posted by Dave11

let's try writing your code with for loop instead of while loop. as far as I understand, you want an array which will get the first letters which are the same in both strings. so we want to start with i=0, and we want to finish when the strings become different. in between we want to incrementally increase i and counter.
so we will get:

Code:

for (i=0,counter=0;word1[i]==word2[i];i++,counter++){
prefix[i]=word2[i];}

see? with 2 lines of code we wrote exactly the same as 14(!) lines of code, we better understood with what we start w, when we end and what happens in between.
isn't it much better now?

The line count of 14 includes lines with braces only and a blank line, so that is quite an exaggeration, especially when your code is poorly formatted (or rather unformatted).

More importantly, your version is not "exactly the same" in net effect:

• You set counter=0, but that does not happen in the code shown, so it is an assumption that might not hold.
• Your loop condition is solely word1[i]==word2[i], leaving out the i < j part. This could lead to a buffer overflow.

Suitably amended, I think this would come closer:

Code:

for (i = 0; i < j && word1[i] == word2[i]; i++)
{
    prefix[i] = word2[i];
}
counter += i;

Originally Posted by Dave11

nobody uses while loop. yes , I know I'll get crucified here with this - but it's true. while is uses very rarely, with very sparse situations , like wait for a socket to open , wait for something to finish download etc. almost 99% of the time you can exchange while loop with for loop.

I don't know how else to put it, but you're dead wrong.

A good programmer uses whichever is most appropriate, and best expresses the intentions.

e.g. It is typically poor choice to use a for loop when you have no initial statement to execute, and no increment expression. It is also typically poor choice to use a for-loop for something that has no upper bound on the number of iterations.

For loops are best used when there is a logical maximum number of iterations, and usually where there is an initialisation statement, and where there is an increment expression.

There are always exceptions to the above, but if you find that most of the time you're not following such guidelines, then you're doing it wrong.