Best way to check that you are at the beginning (the end) of an iterable?

[Chris Torek]

In article <mailman.854.1315441399.27778.python-list at python.org>
Cameron Simpson  <cs at zip.com.au> wrote:
>Facilities like feof() in C and eof in Pascal already lead to lots of
>code that runs happily with flat files and behaves badly in interactive
>or piped input. It is _so_ easy to adopt a style like:
>
>  while not eof(filehandle):
>    line = filehandle.nextline()
>    ...

Minor but important point here: eof() in Pascal is predictive (uses
a "crystal ball" to peer into the future to see whether EOF is is
about to occur -- which really means, reads ahead, causing that
interactivity problem you mentioned), but feof() in C is "post-dictive".
The feof(stream) function returns a false value if the stream has
not yet encountered an EOF, but your very next attempt to read from
it may (or may not) immediately encounter that EOF.

Thus, feof() in C is sort of (but not really) useless.  (The actual
use cases are to distinguish between "EOF" and "error" after a
failed read from a stream -- since C lacks exceptions, getc() just
returns EOF to indicate "failed to get a character due to end of
file or error" -- or in some more obscure cases, such as the
nonstandard getw(), to distinguish between a valid -1 value and
having encountered an EOF.  The companion ferror() function tells
you whether an earlier EOF value was due to an error.)
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Wind River Systems
Intel require I note that my opinions are not those of WRS or Intel
Salt Lake City, UT, USA (40°39.22'N, 111°50.29'W)  +1 801 277 2603
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