From help-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Thu Jan 27 19:49:57 2000
Subject: Re: Suggestion:  add do-enddo(condition)
From: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
To: Joao Cardoso <jcardoso at inescn dot pt>
Cc: help-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 19:50:17 -0600 (CST)

On 28-Jan-2000, Joao Cardoso <jcardoso at inescn dot pt> wrote:

| yes, when browsing an unknown script and founding a 'while' one has to
| check for both a 'do' (above) and a 'endwhile' (bellow). I 'vote' for
| repeat/until or do/until :(

I agree.  I just wrote

  j = i = 10; do while (i> 5) i--; i end, j--; j while (j > 5)

for testing, and I noticed that it was not so easy to see

| > 2) emacs (octave.el)?
| > repeat/until would be easy and unabiguous for all of the code readers.

Yes, it is not easy to tell the Emacs mode what to do for this:

  do
    ...
  while
       ^

when the cursor is at the point marked with ^.  Should it indent,
assuming that the while is in the body of the do ... XXX block, or
does the while end the do ... XXX block.

OK, so I think the solution is to drop do-while and go with do-until
only (it is trivial to just reverse the sense of the condition to make
one into the other anyway).

I know that some people would prefer `repeat', but I still prefer
`do'.  As someone (who shall remain nameless) commented in email:

  Here's my argument: "do is cool, and repeat sucks".

:-)

jwe



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