while loop

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<programming> The loop construct, found in nearly all procedural languages, that executes one or more instructions (the "loop body") repeatedly so long as some condition evaluates to true. In contrast to a repeat loop, the loop body will not be executed at all if the condition is false on entry to the while.

For example, in C, a while loop is written

	while () ;

where <statement> is any expression and is any statement, including a compound statement within braces "..".

A for loop, e.g. in the C language, extends the while loop syntax to collect pre-loop initialisation and loop-end logic into the beginning of the statement.

Perl provides the "until" loop that loops until the loop condition is true.

(2009-10-07)

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