Status of PEPs?

[Neil Benn]

Ville Vainio wrote:

>>>>>>"Thomas" == Thomas Reichelt <XXNOSPAMXX at gibts.net> writes:
>>>>>>            
>>>>>>
>
>    >> while 1:
>    >> do stuff
>    >> if condition:
>    >> break
>
>    Thomas> Well, in my opinion this kind of defeats the purpose of a
>    Thomas> while-loop. The original intention is to test the
>    Thomas> condition in the while-statement, and not to set up an
>
>Original intention for whom? You can imagine "while 1:" as an alias
>for "loop:", i.e. an eternal loop.
>
>The distrust of 'while 1' just needs to be unlearned, which is a
>matter of education. 
>
>    Thomas> infinite loop and break out somewhere. The behavior of
>    Thomas> while (1) { } even generates a warning in other
>    Thomas> languages...
>
>That's because 1 is not a conditional statement. It needs to be
>spelled out as "while(true)", or "for (;;)" in boolean-challenged old
>c++.
>
>  
>
Hello,

          Hmm, respectfully - I disagree with that - I think that 
while(true) is horrible.  When reading through code - I expect something 
like :

while <this statement == true>, keep repeating

    So for while(true), I read :

while <true == true>, keep repeating

    The use of the break statement is non-obvious to me, a flag to 
escape the loop is more typing but avoids the while(true) - which IMO 
compilers for many languages throw warnings about.  The ideal thing to 
me would be to declare a flag (if needed) in the definition of the while 
statement which would limit the scope to exactly the correct field.  I 
also agree however that do/while is not needed as flags work equally as 
well.

    It's a matter of syntactical reading of code and a philosophical 
point.  I must admit that there are some constructs commonly used in 
Python that make me cringe (throwing exceptions as a matter of 
convenience when you could detect that situation and not throw the 
exception in the first place - for example) - however and this is the 
important point, if these constructs are in common use in a language, 
you basically just have to accept them and move on.  Life is too short!!

    Have a good weekend!

Cheer,

Neil

-- 

Neil Benn
Senior Automation Engineer
Cenix BioScience
BioInnovations Zentrum
Tatzberg 47
D-01307
Dresden
Germany

Tel : +49 (0)351 4173 154
e-mail : benn at cenix-bioscience.com
Cenix Website : http://www.cenix-bioscience.com