What does while (i --> 0) mean?

Question

I apologize if this a stupid question, but I cannot find the answer anywhere.

How does the following code work? (I realize that it loops over the elements of els)

var i = els.length;
while (i --> 0) {
    var el = els[i];
    // ...do stuff...
}

I have no idea what --> means. There is no documentation for it. Can someone enlighten me?

Answer 1

It's just weird spacing, should be

while((i--) > 0)

it's just post-decrementing and checking the condition. There was this humorous answer at the C++ question, but I think it got deleted

while (x --\
            \
             \
              \
               > 0) //i goes down to zero!

Or something like that, anyway

So if you had something like

var i=3;
while(i-->0){
     console.log(i);
}

it would return

2
1
0

Answer 2

The code should actually be:

while (i-- > 0) {

where the loop will run if the value after the variable i has been decremented is greater than zero.

Answer 3

It's just weird spacing. It's same as

while (i--  >  0) {

Answer 4

while (i--> 0) 
{
    // ...do stuff
}

is same as

while (i>0) 
{
     i--;    
    // ...do stuff
}

IMHO we should write simple code rather than clever code because it's not understandable by everyone.