teaching for loops before lists (was Re: Range Operation pre-PEP)

[Alex Martelli]

"Roman Suzi" <rnd at onego.ru> wrote in message
news:mailman.989472800.1598.python-list at python.org...
    ...
> > > Even recursion could be explained without lists in Python,
> > > why for-loops need this prerequisite?
> >
> > done much python training lately, or are you just making
>
> Yes. I taught programming classes a year ago.
> That is where I had some trouble with for-loops.

Personally, I've found that for-loops can easily
be taught without having introduced lists yet,
because they work on ANY sequence -- and a datatype
you will surely have introduced VERY early in any
Python course is "string"!  A string is a sequence.
This is of limited (though non-null) usefulness in
most Python use, but it SURE comes in handy when
teaching Python to a totally-raw beginner...:

"""
For example, let's print the vowels, only, from
the string the user has introduced.  This is easy
because we can look at any string one character
at a time with the for statement.

astring = raw_input("Please enter a string: ")
print "Vowels:",
nvowels = 0
for c in astring:
    if c in 'aeiouAEIOU':
        print c,
        nvowels = nvowels + 1
print
print nvowels,"vowels in total"
if nvowels:
    print "The last vowel was",c
"""

then you can go on to explain break, for/else,
and so on, all based on this simple toy example
about looping character by character on a string.

I do think one probably needs to have introduced
raw_input, strings, integers, assignment,
print, and if, before loops can fruitfully be
presented to a raw beginner.  But having some
nice special syntax for range literals would not
alter that, it seems to me.  Lists, if you wish,
can still come later, anyway.


Alex