Infinite Loop

What Does Infinite Loop Mean?

An infinite loop is an instruction sequence that loops endlessly when a terminating condition has not been set, cannot occur, and/or causes the loop to restart before it ends.

Techopedia Explains Infinite Loop

There are times when a programmer intentionally creates an infinite loop. For example, any form object can wait indefinitely for a user action. When an exit condition is not included within the main loop, the loop runs until the application is exited. In this case, the entire form thread is forced to end programmatically. The term infinite loop is only used in situations where the loop condition is not purposely set. These situations occur most commonly with new developers.

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Margaret Rouse

Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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