Existing While Loop

Question

Existing While Loop

Jason-299789

SSC-Insane

Points: 21601
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March 27, 2013 at 12:07 pm

#275680

I'm looking at some code from a project that is not performing very well, and I've noticed that they have a while loop on a couple of the data gathering procedures that do a number of retries.
But theres no obvious break only a Return 0 as per below.
WHILE @Retry<@Loopcount
BEGIN
BEGIN TRY
--DO STUFF
RETURN 0
END TRY
TRY CATCH
SET @Retry=@Retry+1
END CATCH
END
Surely there needs to be a BREAK rather than a RETURN or does the RETURN act like a BREAK in this instance?
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Sean Lange SSC Guru Points: 286590 More actions · Answer 1

Jason-299789 (3/27/2013)
I'm looking at some code from a project that is not performing very well, and I've noticed that they have a while loop on a couple of the data gathering procedures that do a number of retries.
But theres no obvious break only a Return 0 as per below.
WHILE @Retry<@Loopcount
BEGIN
BEGIN TRY
--DO STUFF
RETURN 0
END TRY
TRY CATCH
SET @Retry=@Retry+1
END CATCH
END
Surely there needs to be a BREAK rather than a RETURN or does the RETURN act like a BREAK in this instance?

The return will in fact return from the proc. What scares me is putting this logic in a loop. That somewhat indicates that there are far bigger issues going on. Maybe they expect deadlocks or timeouts somewhat frequently. That is only time I have seen this type of code in my experience.

This type of code always reminds me of the Einstein definition of insanity.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

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Jason-299789 SSC-Insane Points: 21601 More actions · Answer 2

Trust me the project is insanity personified.

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SSC Guide to Posting and Best Practices

Sean Lange SSC Guru Points: 286590 More actions · Answer 3

Jason-299789 (3/27/2013)
Trust me the project is insanity personified.

I feel your pain.

It is painlessly easy to verify that the return will in fact exit a proc.

create proc RunOnTest

as

declare @LoopCount int = 100000000

declare @Retry int = 0

while @Retry<@Loopcount

BEGIN

BEGIN TRY

--DO STUFF

if @Retry < 10

set @Retry = 1/0 --This will obviously raise and error

select @Retry

RETURN 0

END TRY

BEGIN CATCH

print @retry

SET @Retry=@Retry+1

END CATCH

END

go

exec RunOnTest

drop proc RunOnTest