readilywhile

Readilywhile is a term found in discussions of programming language design to describe a hypothetical loop construct intended to improve readability for patterns that combine data acquisition with conditional repetition. It is not an established feature of mainstream languages but has appeared in design notes and speculative proposals as a way to express polling or streaming patterns more clearly than a traditional while loop.

Semantics and variants. In most sketches, readilywhile resembles a standard while loop with a guard that is evaluated at the start of each iteration, but the body is written to perform the data read or resource access associated with the loop. Some proposals separate the read side effects from the guard, while others allow the read operation to occur as part of evaluating the condition or at the top of the loop body. The exact rules vary by proposal, and no consensus exists.

Example (illustrative pseudocode): readilywhile (hasMore()) { item = readNext(); process(item) } Another variant binds the next read to the condition: readilywhile ((readResult = tryRead()) != end) { process(readResult) }

Rationale and criticisms. Proponents argue readilywhile can reduce boilerplate in input-driven loops and make intent more explicit, particularly for streams and interactive input. Critics warn that it can introduce ambiguity about when reads occur and how resources are released, and that lack of standardization limits adoption.

See also: while loop, do-while loop, streaming data patterns, language design.