while true: !!!
Delaney, Timothy
tdelaney at avaya.com
Sun Dec 17 19:03:31 EST 2000
This is precisely the reason this thread exists ...
The idiom is actually
while 1:
do something
if condition:
break
do something else
Basically, it's for dealing with situations where you can't tell at the
beginning or end of a loop if the loop is completed - only somewhere in the
middle. The canonical example is
while 1:
try to read a line from a file
if we didn't get a line:
break
do something with the line
There are many ways of dealing with this, but they all have compromises - in
most cases either duplication of code, or an assumption of memory
availability.
Tim Delaney
Avaya Australia
+61 2 9352 9079
> -----Original Message-----
> From: D-Man [mailto:dman at res137a-039.rh.rit.edu]
> Sent: Sunday, 17 December 2000 4:33 AM
> To: morpheus at here.not.there
> Cc: python-list at python.org
> Subject: Re: while true: !!!
>
>
> On Sat, Dec 16, 2000 at 04:45:07PM +0000, Steve Lamb wrote:
> >
> > while 1:
> > if cond:
> > break
> > do something
> >
>
> why not
>
> while ( !cond ) :
> do something
>
> It involves less typing and more importantly shows the next reader
> when the loop should end. I strongly dislike the fake infinite loops
> like "while 1 :".
>
> -D
>
>
> PS. I haven't been following most of this thread, so forgive me if
> this has already come up.
>
>
> --
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>
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