[oak perl] until loop(s)

[Mark Bole]

Fellow perlmongers:

It's hard to get a jump on this list!  I first saw Sandy's original post 
a few minutes after it originated, and while I was testing some code in 
response, suddenly there are three responses already!

<ot_rant>
My excuse is, I was busy today wrestling with Yahoo! Domains (reseller 
for Melbourne IT), they basically force you to cancel all service and 
support, just to transfer to another domain registrar, essentially 
holding your web site hostage for up to five days.  Thank goodness this 
time I'm handling a non-profit domain that is seasonal in nature and so 
can afford such an extended outage. But what a rip-off! Anyone else have 
similar trials and tribulations?

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/16/0027213
http://www.dnforum.com/showthread.php?t=84483
</ot_rant>

Now, reviewing the previous replies, I think the only new thing of value 
I can add is,
"Don't use '$counter == 5' as a loop termination condition"

You never know when your code will be called (or otherwise altered) by 
other code that somehow just by the sheerest of coincidences decides to 
handle '$counter == 5' as a special case and sends you back '$counter == 
6'.  Use "$counter >= 5" instead.

If at all meaningful, loops should have a guaranteed exit.  As a last 
resort, if you hard-code a failsafe limit, provide a command-line option 
to override it.

Sandy, did anyone achieve world peace in your testing? :-)

-- 
Mark Bole
http://www.bincomputing.com
925-287-0366



Sandy Santra wrote:

> I'm learning (struggling with) "until" loops today.  I want an "until" 
> control structure that "breaks out" when a condition is fulfilled.
>
> Can anyone find the problem in the below loop?  (It never breaks 
> out.)  Thanks.
>
> [...]
> until (my $counter == 5)
> [...]
> --Sandy Santra
>
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