SPUG: English-speak about Perl-speak "for" loops

Jacinta Richardson jarich at perltraining.com.au
Sun Sep 17 18:34:22 PDT 2006



Michael R. Wolf wrote:
> I've started seeing more code that uses 'for' for both kinds of loops.
> 
>  for(init; entry-condition; iteration) { block }
>  for loop-variable (list) { block }
> 
> I know it doesn't confuse the compiler to use 'for' or 'foreach' in either
> case, but it sure does make it harder to speak about.  For that reason, I
> always used to write (and speak) "for" to refer to the C-style 'for' loop
> and "foreach" to refer to the other one.  
> 
> If you use "for" for both Perl-speak styles, how do you English-speak about
> it to avoid ambiguity?

I almost always use "foreach" instead of "for" when I could be lazy and leave
off the four extra chars.  However I speak it as:

	for my $element (@list) {

for/foreach my element in @list do ....

	for (my $i = 0; $i < @list; ++$i) {

for my i is zero, i is less than @list, pre-increment i; do ....

I assume that the person I'm talking to knows enough syntax to guess the missing
bits.

All the best,

	J

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