@previous doesn't work if it's in a b:column

[stephanrauh]

This code doesn't work. That's obvious, but it seems to result in a endless loop.

<b:column>
   <b:message for='@previous' />
</b:column>

[zhedar]

This doesn't seem to be limited to columns. I suspect it's related to NamingContainers, because it also fails inside a b:panel, if there is no content before the b:message.
For example

<h:form id="form1">
    <b:panel title="test" look="primary" id="panel1" collapsible="false">
     <b:message for='@previous' />
     <b:inputText value="test"/>
    </b:panel>
 </h:form>

fails in exactly the same way.

When I read the purpose of @previous it seemed quite clear:

@previous finds the previous JSF element in the same level of the JSF tree.

If there is nothing in front of @previous, it will get sad and search forever :(. We may need to introduce a check for that OR let it use its parent component, if it is the first child component.

Edit: The actual problem was, that there was a i-- in a for loop which itself looped over i++, and there was no break in case of i being 0 at a time.