Feature Request: Short Syntax For Empty While Loop

I’d like to write while (!(this.done && other.done)); instead of while (!(this.done && other.done)) {} for non-blocking threaded code, where the while loop is often used to wait for a value to compute and doesn’t actually contain anything besides the head. This would simply be for more code clarity, nothing else.

[zamfofex]

I feel like it’s much clearer that while is waiting for something to happen instead of making it happen itself when the curly braces are actually there. I’d even put them in their own line:

while(!done)
{
}

[phlopsi]

Wouldn’t you want to check the actual value if the reference didn’t had the expected value?

If you didn’t compare and set the value in a single operation or using a lock, the condition can succeed, then the scheduler could switch the context, that other context could do something that’d cause the condition to return false, then the scheduler switches back to the previous context and executes code while the condition is actually false and not true, which may lead to unwanted behaviour.

To prevent race conditions you either need to lock parts of code or you use atomic operations. Atomic operations reflect CPU commands, so they don’t need explicit locks. Either the whole operation fails or it succeeds, that’s why you work with a while loop, trying to execute the atomic operation as long as needed for it to succeed. In best case, the operation only needs a single try, at which point it’s much faster than always locking and unlocking specific parts of the code.

The question is more: would the some cases where this is used justify making the syntax more complicated just for saving one character token (and possibly some whitespace)?

As this is completely dependant on one’s opinion, that’s the exact reason why I’m trying to convince people through examples. That’s how low-level programming languages evolved into high-level programming languages. People repeatedly wrote code, that may as well be abbreviated through some kind of construct to simplify code writing and/or reduce the chance of producing errors.

Personally, I’d like to have this shorter syntax, but if that feature is deemed unnecessary by the majority, then so be it. 😃