Is using a while block to do nothing a bad thing?

Question

I\'m currently working through the excercises in \'The C Programming Language\'. Here\'s one of my solutions:

int c;

while ((c=getchar()) != EOF) {

if (c == \         


        

Answer 1

I would favor:

while ((c = getchar()) == ' ') /* Eat spaces */;

I've also been known to have a procedure named DoNothing specifically for calling in cases like this. It makes it very clear that you really mean to do nothing.

While non-existent loop bodies are perfectly acceptable it should be VERY clear that it's intentional.