# Extra Clang Tools 18.1.8 documentation

## clang-tidy - bugprone-infinite-loop

# bugprone-infinite-loop

Finds obvious infinite loops (loops where the condition variable is not changed at all).

Finding infinite loops is well-known to be impossible (halting problem). However, it is possible to detect some obvious infinite loops, for example, if the loop condition is not changed. This check detects such loops. A loop is considered infinite if it does not have any loop exit statement (`break`, `continue`, `goto`, `return`, `throw` or a call to a function called as `[[noreturn]]`) and all of the following conditions hold for every variable in the condition:

- It is a local variable.

- It has no reference or pointer aliases.

- It is not a structure or class member.

Furthermore, the condition must not contain a function call to consider the loop infinite since functions may return different values for different calls.

For example, the following loop is considered infinite i is not changed in the body:

    int i = 0, j = 0;
    while (i < 10) {
      ++j;
    }