Question

I have a simple, general question regarding a real small issue that bothers me:
I’m printing a list of elements on the fly, so I don’t have prior knowledge about the number of printed elements. I want a simple format where the elements are separated by a comma (elem1, elem2…) or something similar. Now, if I use a simple loop like:

while(elements to check) {
  if (elem should be printed) {
     print elem . ","
  }
}

I get a comma after the last element…
I know this sounds quite stupid, but is there a way to handle this?

Answer 1

Why not add a comma BEFORE each element (but the first one)? Pseudo-code:

is_first = true
loop element over element_array
BEGIN LOOP
   if (! is_first)
       print ","
   end if
   print element
   is_first = false
END
print NEWLINE