Iterating Backwards in C

That's the price of innovation, I guess; before C invented its "for"-loop, other languages had their equivalents generally looking like this:

    FOR var = start [DOWN] TO end BY step DO ... END

    for(p=head; p; p=p->next) { ... }

    for(s=str; *s; s++) { ... }

As long as you make sure the end points are valid, this is most intuitive for me. Just using i as a backwards step.

for (int i = 1; i <= N; i++) {

    array[N-i]

}

I know it's "too clever", but if I'm writing code no one else will ever see,

  while (i --> 0) {
      // use array[i]
  }

I thought most people used the explicit version:

  for (size_t i = count; i > 0; --i) {
      // use array[i - 1]
  }

  size_t index = i - 1;

For the uninformed: counting backwards in a for loop is faster because comparing an unsigned integer against 0 is generally faster than comparing it against any other value.

It also says not to use `for (i >= 0)` because any unsigned integer is >= 0, and the loop will never end.

Why not use the C/C++ idiom of pointer math?

  _Bool find_last (size_t count, int *haystack, int needle, size_t *where)
  {
    for (const int *pos = haystack + count; pos-- != haystack;) {
      if (*pos == needle) {
        *where = pos - haystack;
        return 1;
      }
    }
    return 0;
  }

I prefer:

    const size_t n = 10;
    for (size_t i = n; i --> 0;) {
        std::cout << i << "\n";
    }

I've been using this method for more than 30 years!

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