seeking deeper (language theory) reason behind Python design choice

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, 11 May 2018 01:51:47 +0300, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:

> Paul Rubin <no.email at nospam.invalid>:
> 
>> Marko Rauhamaa <marko at pacujo.net> writes:
>>> It turns out "while True" is the most natural choice in about half of
>>> the while loops.
>>
>> Maybe the rest would be "repeat until" if Python had that?
> 
> No. "Repeat until" is a relatively infrequent need.

And again, YMMV. In my experience, most "while True" loops would be 
better off written as a "repeat... until True" loop. But since Python 
doesn't have syntax for such repeat until loops, our work-around is to 
use a while True and break out of it at the end of the loop.

To be honest, I'm having trouble thinking of a good use-case for "while 
True", now that we have infinite iterators. Most cases of

    while True:
        x = get_item()
        if not x: break
        process(x)

are better written as:

    for x in iterator:
        process(x)



-- 
Steve