r while-loop inside observe function not breaking properly - r

Question

Edited to add reproducible code
I am building a Shiny app and encountered a problem with a while loop inside an observe function. The program does not display the reactive values after while loop. Here is the relevant code snippets from ui.r and server.r
ui.r
library(shiny)
shinyUI(fluidPage(
sidebarLayout(
sidebarPanel(
textAreaInput("inText", label = "Enter text", rows = 3),
submitButton("Predict")
),
mainPanel(
textOutput("outText"),
textOutput("outCount"),
textOutput("outPred")
)
)
))
Server.r
library(shiny)
library(stringr)
predict <- function(term)
{
if(term == 3)
table <- list()
else
if(term == 0)
table <- c("input","text","empty")
else
table <- c("words","were","found")
return(table)
}
shinyServer(
function(input, output) {
state <- reactiveValues()
observe({
state$inText <- input$inText
state$wcount <- sapply(gregexpr("[[:alpha:]]+", state$inText), function(x) sum(x > 0))
if( state$wcount > 2)
term.c <- 3
else
if( state$wcount == 2)
term.c <- 2
else
if( state$wcount == 1)
term.c <- 1
else
term.c <- 0
cont <- TRUE
while(cont == TRUE) {
if(term.c == 3) {
state$predList <- predict(term.c)
if(length(state$predList) > 0) break
else term.c <- 2
}
if(term.c == 2) {
state$predList <- predict(term.c)
if(length(state$predList) > 0) break
else term.c <- 1
}
if(term.c == 1) {
state$predList <- predict(term.c)
if(length(state$predList) > 0) break
else term.c <- 0
}
if(term.c == 0) {
state$predList <- c("Did", "not", "find", "term")
break
}
}
})
output$outText <- renderPrint({ input$inText })
output$outCount <- renderPrint({ sapply(gregexpr("[[:alpha:]]+", input$inText), function(x) sum(x > 0)) })
output$outPred <- renderPrint({ state$predList })
}
)
Enter two words and the values are displayed properly. Enter three words and an empty list is returned to state$predList which will give it a 0 length. the program should then execute the second if statement and populate state$predList with a non-zero length list. this happens but the display is never refreshed and the program goes into an infinite loop. It jumps to the first line of the observe function and continues in an infinite loop. I see this when I add browser().
Am I not using the reactive values correctly? Thanks for any assistance.