What does the line "while (! Serial);" do in an Arduino program?

Question

I'm new to Arduino, and I am trying a couple of tutorials. What does this line do in a program?

while (! Serial); 

Answer 1

On boards with an FT232 chip or other USB->Serial bridge chip (Uno, Mega, etc) it does absolutely nothing.

On boards with a direct USB connection, such as the Leonardo or the Yùn it waits for an active serial connection to be established by the PC (i.e., for the serial port to be opened by a piece of software).

When you open the serial port of a board like the Uno or Mega the whole board usually resets^*, so opening the serial port allows you to see the first bits of the serial data. On the Leonardo etc it doesn't reset when you open the serial, so any serial output during the setup() function would be missed. Adding that line makes the board pause until you open the serial port, so you get to see that initial bit of data.

^{*) Unless you specifically write some software that doesn't assert DTR when you open the port}