Lambda and colon in while statement for PHP?

Question

What does the below code mean (it's a lambda in the while-statement, then a colon after)? Coming from JavaScript, I have no idea what that means or even how to search for that. Can anyone help explain this?

while ($query->have_posts()): $query->the_post();

Btw I got this from WordPress but is the syntax pure PHP?

Answer 1

This is a less-common while structure:

while (condition):
    doSomething();
endwhile;

This is not how things are traditionally done, but it is valid syntax. See while loop syntax for more details, as well as alternative control syntax.