Which is the correct C infinite loop for or while true

Question

Back in my C C   days  coding an  infinite loop  as  while  true    felt more natural and seemed more obvious to me as opposed to  for        An encounter with PC-lint in the late 1980 s and subsequent best practices discussions broke me of this habit  I have since coded the loops using the for control statement  Today  for the first time in a long while  and perhaps my first need for an infinite loop as a C  developer  I am facing the same situation  Is one of them correct and the other not

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Even I also say the below one is better     while true

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I prefer slightly more  literate  code   I m much more likely to do something like this in practice   bool shouldContinue   true  while  shouldContinue                    shouldContinue   CheckSomething

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The C  compiler will transform both for                     and while  true                  into        label                goto label     The CIL for both is the same  Most people find while true  to be easier to read and understand  for     is rather cryptic  Source  I messed a little more with  NET Reflector  and I compiled both loops with the  quot Optimize Code quot  on in Visual Studio  Both loops compile into  with  NET Reflector   Label 0000      goto Label 0000   Raptors should attack soon

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In those situations where I needed a true infinite loop  I ve always used  while true          It seems to express intent better than an empty for statement

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I personally prefer the for      idiom  coming from a C C   point of view    While I agree that the while  true  is more readable in a sense  and it s what I used way back when even in C C     I ve turned to using the for idiom because    it stands out   I think the fact that a loop doesn t terminate  in a normal fashion  is worth  calling out   and I think that the for      does this a bit more

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The only reason I d say for     is due the CodeDom limitations  while loops can t be declared using CodeDom and for loops are seen as the more general form as an iteration loop    This is a pretty loose reason to choose this other than the fact that the for loop implementation can be used both for normal code and CodeDom generated code  That is  it can be more standard   As a note  you can use code snippets to create a while loop  but the whole loop would need to be a snippet

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The original K amp R book for C  from which C  can trace its ancestry  recommended  for            for infinite loops  It s unambiguous  easy to read  and has a long and noble history behind it   Addendum  Feb 2017   Of course  if you think that this looping form  or any other form  is too cryptic  you can always just add a comment      Infinite loop for                Or   for            Loop forever

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Alternatively one could say having an infinite loop is normally bad practice anyway  since it needs an exit condition unless the app really runs forever  However  if this is for a cruise missile I will accept an explicit exit condition might not be required   Though I do like this one   for  float f   16777216f  f  lt  16777217f  f

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If you re code-golfing  I would suggest for      Beyond that  while true  has the same meaning and seems more intuitive  At any rate  most coders will likely understand both variations  so it doesn t really matter  Use what s most comfortable

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Personally  I have always preferred for     precisely because it has no condition  as opposed to while  true  which has an always-true one   However  this is really a very minor style point  which I don t feel is worth arguing about either way  I ve yet to see a C  style guideline that mandated or forbade either approach

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I think that this may be easier to read and is definitely the standard for use in C    while true         Do My Loop Stuff

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If you want to go old school  goto is still supported in C    STARTOVER          Do something     goto STARTOVER    For a truly infinite loop  this is the go-to command

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It should be while true  not while 1   so while 1  is incorrect in C   yes

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In terms of code readability while true  in whatever language I feel makes more sense  In terms of how the computer sees it there really shouldn t be any difference in today s society of very efficient compilers and interpreters   If there is any performance difference to be had I m sure the translation to MSIL will optimise away  You could check that if you really wanted to

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while true         Is always what I ve used and what I ve seen others use for a loop that has to be broken manually

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To rehash a couple of old jokes    Don t use  for              it makes the statement cry  Unless  of course  you   define EVER

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I think while  true  is a bit more readable

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Gasp  use   while   false         OR as jsight pointed out  you may want to be doubly sure   while   false  amp  amp  true        Before people yell at me  it s all the same CIL code  I checked

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Any expression that always returns true should be OK for while loop   Example   1  1   Just an example for the text stated before  true

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Both of them have the same function  but people generally prefer while true   It feels easy to read and understand

[c#] Which is the correct C# infinite loop, for (;;) or while (true)?

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Examples related to infinite-loop