While Loop Condition Evaluation - Unexpected Behavior with Modified Variable

I'm encountering some unexpected behavior with a while loop in C++ and I'm hoping someone can help me understand what's going on. I have a loop that should terminate when a specific condition related to a variable is met, but the loop is either not terminating or terminating prematurely.

Specifically, I have a scenario where I'm modifying the variable within the loop's body, and the loop condition seems to be evaluated differently than I expect.

#include <iostream>

int main() {
  int counter = 0;
  int limit = 5;

  while (counter < limit) {
    std::cout << "Counter: " << counter << std::endl;
    // Some other operations that might influence counter
    
    // Example modification - sometimes counter gets incremented, sometimes not
    if (counter % 2 == 0) {
      counter++;
    } else {
      // Do something else without incrementing counter
    }

    // I expect the loop to run until counter >= limit
  }

  std::cout << "Loop finished. Counter: " << counter << std::endl;
  return 0;
}

Why might the while loop condition counter < limit not be behaving as expected in this scenario?

Imagine you run yourself the loop.

First step: counter==0, so you increment it and then one has counter==1

Second step: counter==1, so you do nothing, i.e. counter is still equals to 1 and will never been increased any more.

So your loop will go forever with counter==1.