sentinel and counter controlled loops? what?

[magadavixt]

does anyone know a good way to explain these?

[hamsterman]

counter controlled loop is a loop that does something n times.

sentinel controlled loop is a loop that looks at the input and decides whether to continue or not.

[Texan40]

counter controlled:

for(int index = 0; index < 100; ++index) {} // will loop 100 times 

sentinel controlled:

std::ifstream in("myfile.txt");
std::string tmp;
while(std::getline(in,tmp)) {} // will loop until the end of myfile.txt 

[cire]

That's not a sentinel controlled loop. To be a sentinel controlled loop, it would need to check for a sentinel value in the input.