Talk:Loop (statement)

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The content of While loop was merged into Loop (statement) on December 2025. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. For the discussion at that location, see its talk page.

The content of For loop was merged into Loop (statement) on December 2025. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. For the discussion at that location, see its talk page.

The content of Do while loop was merged into Loop (statement) on December 2025. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. For the discussion at that location, see its talk page.

The content of Foreach loop was merged into Loop (statement) on December 2025. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. For the discussion at that location, see its talk page.

Starting blocks

I don't think the long lists of examples belong on WP, as per WP:NOTAMANUAL. If this content is removed from the four articles in question, not much is left. So the final article could be quite lean and tidy. I also think this is a good chance to be neutral when it comes to coding style by trying to use pseudocode to describe how the loops look, generally. I had envisioned the initial look of the article be split into:

Lead (Currently lacking)
Overview (Currently lacking, maybe this should be History instead?)
Conditional loops
- While loops
- Do while loops (This should maybe be added to the previous subsection)
- Three body for loops (C-style for loops)
Enumartions
- For loops (this contains foreach loops)
The functional paradigm?
- Tail recursion??

And then, of course, whatever else gets added. But this is just what I had in mind.

Pinging those who commented on the merge proposal, just to let you know: @Mfield @Stevebroshar @LogicTrace @FaviFake @Andy_Dingley @~2025-39577-62 @Rfc1394

Feel free to chime in (or not :) — xo Ergur (talk) 23:31, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Ergur This looks great, yes! Feel free to be bold and perform it! I doubt there will be much opposition, and it might remain in the merge backlog for a long time if not done quickly.

I'm not technical enough to know about this topic, but I agree the examples are excessive. FaviFake (talk) 15:45, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for carrying it out! FaviFake (talk) 12:27, 23 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I assure you, the pleasure has been all mine. — xo Ergur (talk) 15:31, 23 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A big reordering

Over the last few days I have been doing the change I mentioned I had envisioned in the other thread (above). I prefer this split over the previous one, since it focuses on semantics, whereas the old one focused on syntax. Focusing on syntax makes it possible for the article to be close to language agnostic, which I think is a worthwhile goal. The biggest change is also a good example of this whole semantics/syntax thing; the three-part (C-style) for loop is now grouped with the while loops. The for loop in C has more in common with the while loop in Python than the for loop in Python.

I didn't do much writing and tried to use as much of the text as I could; but I needed to remove some repetition that I hadn't caught before.

There are still some citations missing and the section on functional programming is still empty; these things will materialize eventually.

I hope this change isn't to controversial. — xo Ergur (talk) 23:48, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Merge is a useless mess

Concerning the merge... wow, what a completely useless ugly mess. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 06:13, 23 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't just insult people like that. If you have some constructive feedback then feel free to share it, but don't throw out accusations without anything to back them up. GearsDatapack (talk) 09:31, 23 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The old articles were significantly more useful than this article, because it allowed a reader to compare looping syntax between languages. If a reader knew one of the languages, then it would be much easiser to understand how to do the same thing in another language. My constructive feedback is... delete this article and restore the old articles. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 11:45, 23 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Do_while_loop&oldid=1328055168

* https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=For_loop&oldid=1328055184

* https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Foreach_loop&oldid=1328055255

* https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=While_loop&oldid=1328055148

Thank you for the feedback; It's a shame the article is so far from your standards.

I removed the examples when I merged the articles because I felt they were getting an undue amount of space. In fact, the articles were closer to lists than proper articles. This has happened before; I noticed it at Fork bomb. In that case, a separate article was created to house the list of examples, but it got deleted [1]. My take is:

If you want to learn how to loop in a specific language you are not familiar with, read that language's article.
If the information is not there, read the manual (which Wikipedia is not).

That being said, I feel your initial concerns strike deeper than the omission of the examples. I have only been satisfied in the elaboration of useless in the trifecta useless ugly mess. I'd be remiss if I didn't use this opportunity to improve the quality of the article, now that it has the attention of a Grandmaster Editor First-Class, with well over 200 created articles, . — xo Ergur (talk) 16:23, 26 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]