an ugly file-reading pattern

[Istvan Albert]

I have been working with perl and java for quite a
few years now and I am currently actively looking
to replace perl wit something better, a language that
promotes software engineering principles. I was
directed toward python and ruby, I have been
working with both of them for a couple of weeks now.

And now for the python question:

Suppose that I'm looking for a way to
read lines from a text file:

now there is the readlines() method
that slurps everything up (no good for me
since I don't like to build into my systems
implicit assumptions about filesizes)

if I choose to process the file line by line
the "Learning Python" book advises me to use the
following atrocity:

while 1:
	line = file.readline()
	if not line: break

Maybe I'm picky here but having to start an infinite loop
then needing a conditional to  break out of it is
anything but an elegant pattern.

This has left me wondering about python,

cheers,

Istvan.