best coding practices, loops [closed]

Question

Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.

---

Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.

Closed 9 years ago.

Improve this question

I'm writing some code and I have two possible methods of achieving the goal, so I thought I would ask on here and find out what people think, so the first method is

valid=0;
count=0;
while(!valid&&count<6) 
{
   valid=read_fix_from_flash(download_fix_starting_position.ul);//returns 1 if successful
   count++
}

or the alternative

valid=0;
for(count=6;count>0;count--)
{
  valid=read_fix_from_flash(download_fix_starting_position.ul);//returns 1 if successful
  if(valid){
    break;
  }
}

In my opinion the second method is the better option but I have seen examples using the first method.

Answer 1

I like the while variant more, because it expresses that the number of iterations is variable. Additionally, it is better to use the boolean and && instead of the bitwise and & here.