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That's a great question. The first language I learned was python, and "for i in range(10)" makes a lot of sense to me. But "for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)" must h
by titanomachy 1y ago
That's a great question. The first language I learned was python, and "for i in range(10)" makes a lot of sense to me. But "for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)" must have come first, and in that case "for" is a less obvious choice.
- masklinn 1y agoFOR comes from ALGOL in which as far as I know is was spelled: for p := x step d until n do
- Dwedit 1y agoBASIC had the FOR-NEXT loop back in 1964. 10 FOR N = 1 TO 10 20 PRINT " "; 30 NEXT N C language would first release in 1972, that had the three-part `for` with assignment, condition, and increment parts.
- zabzonk 1y agoIn Fortran, it is a do-loop :)
- bee_rider 1y agoFortran has grown a lot over time. If somebody said it don’t have a do loop in 196X, I wouldn’t be too surprised. Really it’s just syntactic sugar, just use a goto.
- pklausler 1y agoThe entire point of Fortran was being an effective optimizing compiler for DO loops.
- bregma 1y agoFORTRAN IV, at least the version I used on the PDP-11 running RSX, did not have a DO-loop. Just IF and GO TO. But it did have both logical and arithmetic IF.
- pklausler 1y agoI don’t believe this.
- kahirsch 1y agoThis reminds me of a little bit of trivia. In very old versions of BASIC, "FORD=STOP" would be parsed as "FOR D = S TO P". I found that amusing circa 1975.
- QuesnayJr 1y agoAlgol 58 had "for i:=0(1)9". C's for loop is a more general variant.