Intentionwhile

Intentionwhile is a term used in discussions of intention-aware programming to describe a prospective control-flow construct that ties the continuation of a loop to an active intention signal. The concept aims to align a program’s behavior with the goals or planned actions of a user or system, rather than relying solely on static boolean conditions.

Semantics and usage vary, but the core idea is that a loop continues while an intention-detection mechanism reports that the intended action remains in effect. In simple form, the loop's condition is driven by an intention predicate I(), which may be updated asynchronously by an intention engine or user input. Some proposals distinguish the intention condition from the traditional loop guard, treating intention as an additional, dynamic requirement for continued execution.

Implementation of intentionwhile is not standardized and appears mainly in experimental languages, research prototypes, or discussions of intention-aware interfaces. Practically, it is often realized by wrapping a conventional while loop with calls to an intention-tracking service or integrating an intention predicate that polls or subscribes to an intention source. Pseudocode examples are typically shown as intentionwhile (I()) { … } or as a guarded while that incorporates both intention and traditional conditions.

Applications for intentionwhile include intention-aware user interfaces, assistive technologies, robotics, and scenarios where program progress should reflect an operator’s or context’s evolving plans. Limitations include reliance on the accuracy and latency of intention detection, potential privacy concerns, and added complexity in reasoning about loop termination.

See also: intention-aware computing, reactive programming, user intent.