for-else

[Terry Reedy]

"egbert" <egbert.bouwman at hccnet.nl> wrote in message 
news:20080308152034.GA12009 at hccnet.nl...
| However the loop-else really works more like this:
| .  try to do the loop;
| .  if it starts but is interrupted by a break,
| .  then do something else as well.

This is NOT how loop-else works for Python.
If you want to do something special on breaks,
put the break-only code before the break.

while loop_condition:
  <loop statements>
  if break_condition:
    <break-only statements>
    break
  <more loop stuff>

| So they are completely different beasts, and if you try to use
| or explain the one according to the rules of the other one,
| you put a serious strain on your synapses.

I did not mean to broke your brain.

| The explanation that the if-else and the loop-else
| follow the same pattern, runs more or less like this:
| .  all conditions to run the loop to its completion were met,
| .  which means that the loop-condition is not met (any more),
| .  which means that we must do something else.
| For me that is orwellian logic: success is failure.

I gave a clear and coherent explanation of how while derives from if,
and correspondingly, how while-else derives from if-else, to help those who 
want to read and write Python code.  Building on the pseudo-snippet above, 
one can write

while loop_condition:
  <loop statements>
  if break_condition:
    <break-only statements>
    break
  <more loop stuff>
else:
  <completion-only statements>

Python allows one to have both break-only and completion-only sections 
together in one compound statement and *without* having to fiddle with a 
special flag variable.  I am sorry if you cannot appreciate such elegance 
and can only spit on it as 'orwellian'.

If the sense of else were reversed, one would have to write the clumbsier

complete = True # though false at this point
while loop_condition:
  <loop statements>
  if break_condition:
    complete = False
    break
  <more loop stuff>
else:
  <break-only statements>
if complete:
  <completion-only statements>

Terry Jan Reedy