Just curious !!

[Jugal Hans]

Hi All,
If a for loop ends with a semicolon it iters itself till the conditions returns false,why was this need ever to do that ? I am really curious to know why is this treated correct ? and in what scenarios does it benefit the programmer ?
I mean, semicolon in the end doesnt seem to be in line with other statements in terms of syntax ?
and with just the use of a small semicolon u r disfiguring your code too much, i think.
But anyways regardless of my thoughts I guess we have to bow down in front of the compiler ??

Thanks

[Mike Gershman]

There are for loops where all the work is done in the header, which can itself contain many statements.

I guess we have to bow down in front of the compiler ??

Actually, a great deal of thought went into existing Java syntax, but the designers are always open to suggestions. As far as I know, there are no compilers on the Java design team. You don't have to bow down to them, just promise to avoid using Internet Explorer.

[Barry Gaunt]

Perhaps it would have been better to have insisted that an empty block "{}", rather than a empty statement (indicated by ";" by itself), was always used to indicate an empty for ( or while ) loop. I'm sure it would have killed a lot of bugs.

[Mike Gershman]

Barry:
Good idea, but adding the rule now would not be backward compatible.
At least "for( .. );" could generate a warning, but javac doesn't do many warnings.

[Joe Borderi]

  
for(int i=0; i<someOp(); ++i){
  ;
}

Just because the compiler compiles the code, it doesn't mean the code should be coded that way. After all, line breaks, in most cases, are optional.

*** TANGENT ALERT! TANGENT ALERT! ***
While we are in the neighborhood, I believe the same about if statements. The only time I code a one line if statement is when at the top of a block I have an if statement followed by a break or a continue:

  
for(int i=0; i<someOp(); ++i){
  if(someCondition) continue;            //OK
  if(someOtherCondition) doSomething();  //never this
  //more code
}

Curiously, the idiom for an infinite loop used to be:

  
for(; ;) {
  if(someCondition){
    //code
  }
  else if(someOtherCondition){
    //code
  }
  else{
    break;
  }
 
//Now the following is almost ubiquitous: 
while(true){
  if(someCondition){
    //code
  }
  else if(someOtherCondition){
    //code
  }
  else{
    break;
  }  
}

(Edited to disable smilies. For my infinite for loop, the for(;;) displayed as a winking smiley.)
[ December 05, 2004: Message edited by: J Borderi ]