Re: self-feeding infinite loop

It's not clear to me exactly what you're trying to do, but you've sinned against a big no-no:

Do not modify an array in a foreach loop over the same array.

What I do, if I don't mind the array being eaten in the process, is something like this:

$\ = "\n";  # append newline after print
@a = 'a';
while(@a) {   # there's stuff left in the array
    my $item = shift @a;  # remove it, ready to process
    print $item;
    if(rand() < 0.8) {
        # sometimes add a new item
        push @a, ('a' .. 'z')[int rand 26];
    }
}
[download]

Example output:

a
p
i
n
o
q
e
p
k
[download]

You see? while doesn't mind at all if the item to loop over, changes under it. foreach does.

That's one way that you can, for example, replace a recursive implementation of a file digger that does something like File::Find, with an iterative one: just push new directories you encounter while processing a directory, onto the to-do array.

Comment on Re: self-feeding infinite loop Select or Download Code

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Re^2: self-feeding infinite loop by Dominus (Parson) on Aug 20, 2007 at 14:02 UTC
It's not clear to me exactly what you're trying to do, but you've sinned against a big no-no: Do not modify an array in a foreach loop over the same array. I argued a few years ago on p5p that the prohibition in the manual is excessive, since the behavior is actually fairly simple and reliable. The only real problem with the technique is that, since p5p has declined to guarantee the current simple, reliable behavior, you have to worry that perhaps a future version of Perl will change the behavior. I tried to get p5p to agree to guarantee the current behavior, but it didn't happen. In former times there was a similar warning about modifying a hash in the middle of a `while (each %hash)` loop, even though the hash code had a special case in it to handle that exact use case, since version 5.000. The prohibition in the manual had been added later by someone with more superstition and less understanding of the actual behavior. A lot of stuff in the manual is like that, warning you that you must throw salt over your shoulder to avoid the wrath of the Moon God, or whatever. I don't think referring to warnings in the manual as "no-nos" or thinking of them in terms of "sin" is a very effective way to handle this sort of issue. We are supposed to be professional adults, not toddlers, and this is supposed to be an engineering discipline, not some mystical rite. Using the language of superstition can only promote superstitious behavior. -- Mark Dominus Perl Paraphernalia	[reply]
Re^3: self-feeding infinite loop by eric256 (Parson) on Aug 20, 2007 at 16:33 UTC
So if you splice an array while using `for` what do you expect it to do? Especially if you splice elements such that your current index either no longer exists or is in a completly new location? More importantly how many people can agree on what the correct behavior is then? ___________ Eric Hodges	[reply] [d/l]
Re^4: self-feeding infinite loop by Dominus (Parson) on Aug 20, 2007 at 16:50 UTC
your current index either no longer exists or is in a completly new location? The index is a number. Numbers do not have locations, and cannot be created or destroyed, not even by the `splice` operator. -- Mark Dominus Perl Paraphernalia	[reply]
Re^5: self-feeding infinite loop by eric256 (Parson) on Aug 20, 2007 at 18:55 UTC
Re^6: self-feeding infinite loop by Dominus (Parson) on Aug 20, 2007 at 20:01 UTC
Some notes below your chosen depth have not been shown here
Re^2: self-feeding infinite loop by spx2 (Deacon) on Aug 18, 2007 at 14:03 UTC
on the contrary,the code i first posted , namely the first example is showing that using foreach and push works to achieve an infinite loop behaviour.	[reply]
Re^3: self-feeding infinite loop by bart (Canon) on Aug 18, 2007 at 14:17 UTC
Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. But you're definitely in the territory of "unpredictable behaviour".	[reply]
Re^4: self-feeding infinite loop by syphilis (Archbishop) on Aug 18, 2007 at 14:33 UTC
But you're definitely in the territory of "unpredictable behaviour" I may be being somewhat picky (or I may even be downright wrong), but I don't see any "unpredictable behaviour" there. I agree that one needs to be careful when modifying an array by iterating over the same array, but the following does behave predictably: `use strict; use warnings; my @array = ('a'); foreach (@array) { push @array,'a'; print"@array\n"; sleep(1); # so we can absorb what's happening }` [download] Cheers, Rob	[reply] [d/l]
Re^5: self-feeding infinite loop by Errto (Vicar) on Aug 18, 2007 at 18:03 UTC