On Monday, February 14th, 2022 at 11:38, Andy Shevchenko <andriy.shevchenko@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > > IMO *always* prefer a for loop over while or do-while.
> > > >
> > > > The for (i = 0; i < N; i++) is such a strong paradigm in C. You
> > > > instantly know how many times you're going to loop, at a glance. Not so
> > > > with with the alternatives, which should be used sparingly.
> > >
> > > while () {} _is_ a paradigm, for-loop is syntax sugar on top of it.
> >
> > Naw, that's not true.
>
> In the section 3.5 "Loops - While and For" in "The C Programming
> Language" 2nd by K&R, the authors said:
>
> The for statement ... is equivalent to ... while..."
>
> They said that for is equivalent to while, and not otherwise.
>
> Also, syntax sugar by definition declares something that can be written as
> a single line of code, which usually is done using more (not always).
arr[i] is syntaxic sugar for *(arr + i), yet we keep writing the former,
because it's way more readable. The same goes for the for vs. while loops.
It may be obvious for you because you're a C guru, but to me it just obfuscates
the code. Too many C projects end up becoming completely unreadable because of
patterns like these.
Idiomatic C code isn't written by doing pointless micro-optimizations.
