[Asterisk-Users] Unexpected results with "While" and "EndWhile" applications

[John Todd]

I seem to be having a conceptual problem with the "While" and 
"EndWhile" applications.  It seems that on the first cycle, even if 
the result of the "While" is false that the enclosed applications 
will get run.  Is this expected?  It seems to be counter-intuitive, 
but I don't know what the intent of the While routines is.  I could 
of course put a "GotoIf" before the While loop to check to ensure 
that the first expression is true before entry into the While loop, 
but that seems redundant and ugly since the while point of While and 
EndWhile is to avoid the inelegance of GotoIf, I thought.

If anyone can't come up with a better explanation, I'll open a ticket 
on this but I'd like to first make sure that this behavior is not 
expected.


exten => 2231,1,Set(staticnumber=0)
exten => 2231,n,Set(counter=1)
exten => 2231,n,While($["${counter}"<"${staticnumber}"])
exten => 2231,n,NoOp("This part of the code should never run!")
exten => 2231,n,Set(counter=$[${counter}+1])
exten => 2231,n,EndWhile
exten => 2231,n,NoOp("This part of the code should be the only thing 
that gets run!")


Console output from dialing 2231:

     -- Executing Set("SIP/2203-c134", "staticnumber=0") in new stack
     -- Executing Set("SIP/2203-c134", "counter=1") in new stack
     -- Executing While("SIP/2203-c134", "0") in new stack
     -- Executing NoOp("SIP/2203-c134", ""This part of the code should 
never run!"") in new stack
     -- Executing Set("SIP/2203-c134", "counter=2") in new stack
     -- Executing EndWhile("SIP/2203-c134", "") in new stack
     -- Executing NoOp("SIP/2203-c134", ""This part of the code should 
be the only thing that gets run!"") in new stack
*CLI> show version
Asterisk CVS HEAD built by root at some.host.com on a i686 running Linux 
on 2005-09-03 23:27:34 UTC

JT