I agree. The phenomenon that for in perl is equivalent to while is best shown in that for(;<>;){ has the same magic as while(<>){.

Also I note that until(){ is accepted too, and it seems to mean until(1){, that is, it's not executed at all.

Of course, while() means while(1) only as a prefix while. A suffix while (); has an empty list in its condition as expected, so it doesn't execute at all, a suffix while; is an error, and the results for until is similar.