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PHP needs a while-else statement

I think PHP ought to have a while-else statement. There is, of course, a while statement and an if-else statement, but a while() else statement would be perfect for returning a bunch of rows from a MySQL database:

<?php

$q = mysql_query("SELECT name FROM people WHERE age >= 21");
while ($person = mysql_fetch_assoc($q))
{
    echo "$person[name] is at least 21 years old.";
}
else
{
    echo "No one 21 or older was found in the database!";
}

?>

This hypothetical code queries the database for everyone age 21 or older, looping through all the results. If no results were found, it very conveniently says so. Because there is no while-else statement, the programmer has to nest the the while() loop inside an if() statement. A while-else statement would be much cleaner.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 19th, 2006 at 2:25 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “PHP needs a while-else statement”

  1. Alex Kadis Says:
    February 20th, 2006 at 2:57 pm
    Interesting thought, I am inclined to agree with you, however I do not know what would go into making something like this happen, and I have no idea if it is even feasible. Perhaps someone with more knowledge on the subject will chime in.
  2. Gustavo Narea Says:
    February 20th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
    +1.

    Any PHP developer there?

  3. joel alexandre Says:
    February 20th, 2006 at 6:00 pm
    PHP doesn’t support that, but Smarty does.

    I normally use
    foreach / else to display tables.

  4. taaniel Says:
    February 21st, 2006 at 2:12 am
    agreed, but alternative way is use one variable and if after while, for example

    $q = mysql_query(‘SELECT * FROM tbl’);
    $n = 0;
    while($r = mysql_fetch_assoc($q))
    {
    // do something
    ++$n
    }
    if(0 == $n)
    {
    // no rows found
    }

  5. redcore Says:
    August 21st, 2006 at 2:19 pm
    I definitely agree. In fact, I was just trying to just that and upon that not working I googled it and realized it doesn’t exist. It’s a common sense statement, if you ask me (hence why I tried doing it). I reckon a post on php.net’s forum would be a good way of seeing why this cannot be done and if it can, give it some thought and perhaps enough traction to be implimented.
  6. Jacques Says:
    July 16th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
    I wholeheartedly agree, here’s something that I’ve considered using that represents the while-else. The only problem is if you change the list=fetch line, you have to do it twice.

    if (list($a,$b) = mysql_fetch_row($result)) {
    do {
    process($a,$b);
    } while (list($a,$b) = mysql_fetch_row($result));
    } else {
    print “No results returned”;
    }

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