WHILE
Synopsis
[label :] WHILE condition DO
statements
END WHILE
Description
The WHILE
statement is an optional construct in SQL
routines to allow processing of a block of statements
as long as a condition is met. The condition is validated as a first step of
each iteration.
The expression that defines the condition
is evaluated at least once. If the
result is true
, processing moves to DO
, through following statements
and
back to WHILE
and the condition
. If the result is false
, processing moves
to END WHILE
and continues with the next statement in the function.
The optional label
before the WHILE
keyword can be used to name the
block.
Note that a WHILE
statement is very similar, with the difference that for
REPEAT
the statements are processed at least once, and for WHILE
blocks the
statements might not be processed at all.
Examples
WHILE p > 1 DO
SET r = r * n;
SET p = p - 1;
END WHILE;
Further examples of varying complexity that cover usage of the WHILE
statement
in combination with other statements are available in the SQL routines examples
documentation.