You can use whileTrue: if it's a problem for you not to evaluate the limit at each iteration of the loop.

If you look at OrderedCollection for example, there are implemented differently in Pharo/VW and Squeak. Pharo and VW use to:do: whereas Squeak uses whileTrue: to iterate over the collection. Hence, if you remove elements from the OrderedCollection while iterating over it, the behavior is different.

2015-11-20 1:34 GMT+01:00 Eliot Miranda <eliot.miranda@gmail.com>:

Because were to:do: not inlined the expression passed as the to: actual argument would be evaluated exactly once (bound to the formal argument for to:) and so assigning to a temporary preserves the semantics in the most direct way.�� If the expression has side effects then those side effects must occur only once.

Note that were the to: expression merely another variable then the compiler could only substitute the original variable if it's value could not change, e.g. in

exampleToDoArgumentLimitIsExpression
�� | count sum |
�� count := 10.
�� sum := 0.
�� 1 to: count do: [ :each | sum := sum + each].
�� ^sum

It is ok to use count directly as the limit variable, but in this it is not:

exampleToDoArgumentLimitIsExpression
�� | count sum |
�� count := 10.
�� sum := 0.
�� 1 to: count do: [ :each | sum := sum + each. count := #somethingElseEntirely].
�� ^sum

_,,,^..^,,,_ (phone)

> On Nov 19, 2015, at 1:14 PM, Nicolai Hess <nicolaihess@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> What is the purpose of replacing expressions, used as limits in a
> to:do: call with by a new temporary variable?
>
> For example:
>
> OCOpalExamples>>#exampleToDoArgumentLimitIsExpression
> the code is
>
> exampleToDoArgumentLimitIsExpression
>�� | count sum |
>�� count := 10.
>�� sum := 0.
>�� 1 to: count - 1 do: [ :each | sum := sum + each].
>�� ^sum
>
> the decompiled bytecode :
>
> exampleToDoArgumentLimitIsExpression
>�� | tmp1 tmp2 tmp3 |
>�� tmp1 := 10.
>�� tmp2 := 0.
>�� tmp3 := tmp1 - 1.
>�� 1 to: tmp3 do: [ :tmp4 | tmp2 := tmp2 + tmp4 ].
>�� ^ tmp2
>
> So, the expression (count - 1) in the to:do: loop is replaced by a new
> temporay (tmp3).
>
> Ok, but why ?