< programming > (Or "do loop") A loop construct found in many imperative programming languages which repeatedly executes some instructions while a condition is true.
It is found in Pascal , BASIC and C ("do" form). The condition may be tested with a "while" or "until" keyword .
In constrast to a while loop, the "loop body" is executed once before the condition is tested. This is useful when the condition depends on the action of the loop body. In the following BASIC loop "Hello" is printed once despite the fact that the condition is false;
i = 2 repeat print "Hello" i = i+1 until i>0
See also while loop and for loop .
(1999-05-06)