Are endless loops in bad form?
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by rlbond
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Published on 2009-06-02T23:31:32Z
Indexed on
2010/04/18
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So I have some C++ code for back-tracking nodes in a BFS algorithm. It looks a little like this:
typedef std::map<int> MapType;
bool IsValuePresent(const MapType& myMap, int beginVal, int searchVal)
{
int current_val = beginVal;
while (true)
{
if (current_val == searchVal)
return true;
MapType::iterator it = myMap.find(current_val);
assert(current_val != myMap.end());
if (current_val == it->second) // end of the line
return false;
current_val = it->second;
}
}
However, the while (true)
seems... suspicious to me. I know this code works, and logically I know it should work. However, I can't shake the feeling that there should be some condition in the while
, but really the only possible one is to use a bool
variable just to say if it's done. Should I stop worrying? Or is this really bad form.
EDIT: Thanks to all for noticing that there is a way to get around this. However, I would still like to know if there are other valid cases.
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