Why is "while" ticking me off???

[Huaiyu Zhu]

On Thu, 05 Oct 2000 19:58:25 -0400, Thomas Gagne <tgagne at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>I have a file that I want to read line-by-line, and stop reading when I run
>out of lines.  My first desire was to attempt:
>
>while line = fp.readline():
>    do something with 'line'
>
>but that doesn't work because Python doesn't allow assignments inside flow
>control statements.  The example I see in books is pretty useless:

This is a recurring theme.  There is a reason that Python does not allow
this.  There is also a need for this.  So something must be done about it.

Here's a little silly Python Extension Proposal:

while line = fp.readline(); line:
    do something with line

Similarly:

i = 0
for item in list; i +=1; item:
    do something with (i, item)

And

if a = dict1[k1]; a:
    do something with a
elif a = dict2[k2]; a<0:
    do something else with a
elif a = dict3[k3]; a=="asdsdaf":
    do something different with a

And many others.  See some more verbose description at

http://www.geocities.com/huaiyu_zhu/python/ififif.txt

Any comments?

Huaiyu