That'll break the program's logic; $loop may only be decremented within the conditional (otherwise, yes, I'd put it outside of it).

I that case, decrement it as the first thing in the conditional, then you're guaranteed it'll happen.

The point is that, as described, there is no reason to employed contorted logic to achieve the described requirement.

Perhaps in an attempt to simplify the original code you've omitted something that makes the contorted logic necessary, but as posted, it simply isn't needed.