how to get the ordinal number in list

[Roy Smith]

In article <mailman.12827.1407702752.18130.python-list at python.org>,
 Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> On 10/08/2014 19:26, Rustom Mody wrote:
> >
> > Its when we have variables that are assigned in multiple places that
> > we start seeing mathematical abominations like
> > x = x+1
> >
> 
> I'm not bothered about it being a mathematical or any other type of 
> abomination.  It works, practically beats purity, so if it ain't broke, 
> please don't fix it, for some definition of fix.

I'm with Mark.  This isn't math, it's programming.  Sure, the 
intersection of the two is non-null, but they are different things.  
I'll often do things like:

for line in input:
   line = line.strip()
   # do more stuff

Sure, I could invent some other variable name to avoid re-using the same 
name, but does:

for line in input:
   stripped_line = line.strip()
   # do more stuff

really make this any easier to read or understand?  I think not.