while loops clean up basic loops. Let’s compare

Using a typical for loop:

for (var i=0; i < maxNum; i++ ) { ...

And a while loop:

var i = maxNum
while ( i-- ) { ...

Only two statements and the logic inside the conditional is one statement. The downside to the while loop above is that it will iterate in a descending manner. That is, if maxNum is 9, the loop will iterate from 9 down to 0, instead of 0 to 9. Of course, you could just as well do an ascending while loop, which looks like:

var i = -1;
while ( i++ < maxNum ) { ...

But this can be a bit obscure if you’re not familiar with what’s going on. Plus, it’s just as long as the standard for loop.

See Rebecca Murphey’s documentation for more details.