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Breaking out of loops

 [1/5] from: tedlandis:rogers at: 27-Nov-2002 14:12


Greetings again, When breaking out of a loop what is the best way to indicate this? for example: loop 100 [ ... if a = b [break] ... ] How do I tell if the loop was completed (all 100 iterations) or was terminated prematurely? Since all counter words (in for, repeat, etc.) seem to be local to the block, I am thinking something like: if loop 100 [ ... if a = b [break/return "Aborted"] ... ] = "Aborted" [do something else] ...but that doesn't seem very "clean"... Thanks, Ted

 [2/5] from: joel:neely:fedex at: 28-Nov-2002 9:19


Hi, Ted, Well, it depends... ;-) Ted Landis wrote:
> Greetings again, > When breaking out of a loop what is the best way to indicate this?
<<quoted lines omitted: 6>>
> How do I tell if the loop was completed (all 100 iterations) or was > terminated prematurely?
One possibility is based on the fact that the value yielded by an evaluation of LOOP _n_ _block_ is the last expression evaluated in the block. print join either loop 100 [ ... if ... [break/return true] ... false ] ["Premature"]["Normal"] " termination!" so that the value of the entire loop evaluation is TRUE/FALSE based on whether the block did/didn't bail out. Another possibility is loopcount: 0 repeat i 100 [ ... if ... [break] ... loopcount = i ] at which point LOOPCOUNT contains the number of complete passes thru the loop that were completed. I realize some folks might argue No fair! You replaced LOOP with REPEAT to get that result! to which I would reply The whole point of LOOP is that it lets you evaluate a block some specified number of times *without*caring* about the value of a "counter" variable. If we *do* care about that, then we should use a form that was designed with the concept of the counter in mind. I would back up and ask myself "Why do I care?" and then do something appropriate for that goal. For example, if I'm searching a block of numbers for a negative value, I can stop searching when one is found. Falling through the entire loop means that no such value occurred. This could be handled by wrapping the looping expression in a function that returns either an appropriate value for "success" or a "bottom" value for "failure", as in first-negative: func [b [block!]] [ foreach item b [if negative? item [return item]] none ] either found? negval: first-negative [6 2 7 4 3 -2 2 5] [ print ["The negative value" negval "was found"] ][ print "No negative values in block!" ] Try thinking more of strategy and less of tactics, and problems such as this tend to melt away... HTH! -jn- -- ; Joel Neely joeldotneelyatfedexdotcom REBOL [] do [ do func [s] [ foreach [a b] s [prin b] ] sort/skip do function [s] [t] [ t: "" foreach [a b] s [repend t [b a]] t ] { | e s m!zauafBpcvekexEohthjJakwLrngohOqrlryRnsctdtiub} 2 ]

 [3/5] from: tedlandis::rogers::com at: 28-Nov-2002 13:50


Thanks Joel for your very complete reply. I had considered these types of solutions but was hoping that there might be some access to the internal loop counter that REBOL uses to process the loop block. It must exist, it is just not visible and I am not sure why. Maybe my problem is that I am still thinking "in the box". ;-) Ted On Thursday, Nov 28, 2002, at 10:19 Canada/Eastern, Joel Neely wrote:

 [4/5] from: greggirwin:mindspring at: 28-Nov-2002 13:09


Hi Ted, TL> Maybe my problem is that I am still thinking "in the box". ;-) I've been REBOLing for about a year and half now, and I still have trouble getting out of the box. :) -- Gregg

 [5/5] from: chalz:earthlink at: 28-Nov-2002 21:09


I've been toying with REBOL on and off for almost 2yrs now, and I usually can't peep over the box's edge most times.

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