Question

I know this has probably already been answered somewhere, I just can’t find it. Why doesn’t C# allow me to use while(1)? I know that ‘There is no conversion between the bool type and other types’ in C# but why? What are the reasons for this, when in c++ it’s perfectly acceptable.

Answer 1

It is to keep programmers from accidentally doing something they did not want to do.

Consider this common pitfall in C/C++:

int x = getValue();
if (x = 10) {
  // do something
}

This will compile and run, but produce unexpected results (the programmer likely meant to check that x equals 10, not assign to x — otherwise, why would he need the test at all? It will always evaluate to true).

By forcing conditionals to be of boolean type, you avoid this issue.