Understanding infinite loops
So far, we have considered loops that have an actual end. In most cases, this is both intended and desirable. When loops never end, either unintentionally because we goofed up somewhere or intentionally, they are called an infinite loop. There are a few special cases where an infinite loop is actually intentional. The cases are as follows:
- When the user interacts with the program until they choose to quit the program.
- When there is input with no known end, as in networking, where data can come at any time.
- Operating system event loop processing. This begins upon boot-up and waits (loops) for events to happen until the system is shut down.
When you start a program that accepts user input – keyboard strokes, mouse movements, and so on – it goes into an infinite loop to process each input. We would then need to use a break, goto, or return statement in the statement-body of our infinite loop to end it.
A simplified version...
