Purpose of while(1); statement in C

Question

What purpose does while(1); serve ? I am aware while(1) (no semicolon) loops infinitely and is similar to a spinlock situation. However I do not

Answer 1

I think that the reason that while(1); is used is because earlier in the code an EventHandler or interrupt has been set on this thread. Using standard Thread Safe locking code can be fairly costly (in time) when you know that your code will only 'wait' for a very short amount of time. Therefore you can set up the interrupt and 'spin' using while(1); which, although is a Busy Wait (doesn't let the CPU Idle/service other threads) takes up very few cycles to set up.

In summary, it's a 'cheap' spinlock while your thread waits for an interrupt or Event.