Question

Syntactically I see that they loop indefinitely until a break statement is reached, but are they compiled to the same thing? Is the for slightly faster because it doesn’t have a condition to check? Aside from code readability, is there even a difference?

Answer 1

Given this input:

private static void ForLoop()
{
    int n = 0;
    for (; ; )
    {
        Console.WriteLine(n++);
    }
}

private static void WhileLoop()
{
    int n = 0;
    while (true)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(n++);
    }
}

…you get this output:

.method private hidebysig static void  ForLoop() cil managed
{
  // Code size       14 (0xe)
  .maxstack  3
  .locals init ([0] int32 n)
  IL_0000:  ldc.i4.0
  IL_0001:  stloc.0
  IL_0002:  ldloc.0
  IL_0003:  dup
  IL_0004:  ldc.i4.1
  IL_0005:  add
  IL_0006:  stloc.0
  IL_0007:  call       void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(int32)
  IL_000c:  br.s       IL_0002
} // end of method Program::ForLoop


.method private hidebysig static void  WhileLoop() cil managed
{
  // Code size       14 (0xe)
  .maxstack  3
  .locals init ([0] int32 n)
  IL_0000:  ldc.i4.0
  IL_0001:  stloc.0
  IL_0002:  ldloc.0
  IL_0003:  dup
  IL_0004:  ldc.i4.1
  IL_0005:  add
  IL_0006:  stloc.0
  IL_0007:  call       void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(int32)
  IL_000c:  br.s       IL_0002
} // end of method Program::WhileLoop

Remarkably similar, I would say (identical, even).