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From: Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Loops (was Re: do { quit; } else { })
Date: Sun, 04 May 2025 07:40:30 -0700
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Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> writes:

> On 15/04/2025 13:34, Michael S wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>> I suspect that 'while' loop is here in C because Dennis Ritchie wanted
>> 'do .. while() ' and thought that if the keyword is here anyway than
>> why not reuse it?
>> In the hindsight, probably a mistake.
>
> In hindsight:
>
> $ find . -name \*.c | xargs cat | wc -l
> 126343
> $ find . -name \*.c | xargs grep -w while | wc -l
> 556
> $ find . -name \*.c | xargs grep -w for | wc -l
> 1258
>
>
> So although I use for() about twice as much as I use while(), I still
> find while a better option one time in three.  That's useful enough to
> make it worth keeping in the toolbox.

Out of curiousity, I tabulated a similar set of statistics for
a recent C project.  Considering just the three iteration
control structures (do/for/while), the results (rounded to the
nearest 0.1 percent) were

   while      56.1 %
   for        24.1 %
   do/while   19.5 %