A Step in the right direction

Posted by  in June 17, 2004    * Comments(3)     

I was just reading Erik Porter’s blog, and he had a code example of :


Dim Count As Integer = 5

For i As Integer = 0 To Count – 1
     j = Math.Abs(i – (Count – 1))
Next


And I was thinking why ?? Why not just use VB.NET’s Step directive ?


Dim Count As Integer = 5

For i As Integer = 4 To 0 Step -1
     j = i
Next



3 Comments so far

  1.   Erik Porter on June 17th, 2004          

    Hey Bill…thanks for readin’ my blog 😉

    Check out my comment here…sorry I didn’t explain it very well…

    http://weblogs.asp.net/eporter/archive/2004/06/16/157241.aspx#157275

  2.   Bill McCarthy on June 17th, 2004          

    Hey Erik.. Thanks for reading mine 😉

    Okay, so you want a counter in both directions, then why not just initiate j outside of the loop and iether increment it or decrement it on each loop.

    Now that VB.NET has the continue statement, you might find that a better over-all strategy (just be careful of code placement), as it means you can have one counter running behind the other such as when you are iterating a list and skipping items.

    So code such as :

    j = -1

    For i As Integer = 4 To 0 Step -1

    j += 1

    Next

    or vice versa:

    j = 5

    For i As Integer = 0 To 4

    j -= 1

    Next

  3.   Erik Porter on June 17th, 2004          

    Good point!

    It might be interesting to weigh code readability vs. performance, see if either way of doing it would outweigh the other in those two areas.

    btw, yah, Continue rocks…I’m so excited for it!

    This is why I love blogging I get to share and learn! 🙂

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