PEP on breaking outer loops with StopIteration

[Dan Bishop]

On Jun 9, 8:07 pm, "Kris Kowal" <kris.ko... at cixar.com> wrote:
> I had a thought that might be pepworthy.  Might we be able to break
> outer loops using an iter-instance specific StopIteration type?
>
> This is the desired, if not desirable, syntax::
>
>     import string
>     letters = iter(string.lowercase)
>     for letter in letters:
>         for number in range(10):
>             print letter, number
>             if letter == 'a' and number == 5:
>                 raise StopIteration()
>             if letter == 'b' and number == 5:
>                 raise letters.StopIteration()
>

You can break out of outer loops now with the proper (ab)use of
exceptions:


class BreakOuter(Exception):
    pass

try:
    for letter in string.lowercase:
        for number in xrange(10):
            print letter, number
            if letter == 'a' and number == 5:
                break
            if letter == 'b' and number == 5:
                raise BreakOuter()
except BreakOuter:
    pass


Or, for consistency:

class BreakInner(Exception):
    pass

class BreakOuter(Exception):
    pass

try:
    for letter in string.lowercase:
        try:
            for number in xrange(10):
                print letter, number
                if letter == 'a' and number == 5:
                    raise BreakInner()
                if letter == 'b' and number == 5:
                    raise BreakOuter()
        except BreakInner:
            pass
except BreakOuter:
    pass