on the popularity of loops while and for

[Hope Rouselle]

Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> writes:

> On Sun, Aug 29, 2021 at 7:40 AM Hope Rouselle <hrouselle at jevedi.com> wrote:
>>
>> I'd like get a statistic of how often each loop is used in practice.
>>
>> I was trying to take a look at the Python's standard libraries --- those
>> included in a standard installation of Python 3.9.6, say --- to see
>> which loops are more often used among while and for loops.  Of course,
>> since English use the preposition ``for'' a lot, that makes my life
>> harder.  Removing comments is easy, but removing strings is harder.  So
>> I don't know yet what I'll do.
>>
>> Have you guys ever measured something like that in a casual or serious
>> way?  I'd love to know.  Thank you!
>
> For analysis like this, I recommend using the Abstract Syntax Tree:
>
> https://docs.python.org/3/library/ast.html
>
> You can take a Python source file, parse it to the AST, and then walk
> that tree to see what it's using. That will avoid any false positives
> from the word "for" coming up in the wrong places.

Wonderful.  Someone here actually posted a nice ``routine'' that does
the job marvelously well.  I had the impression the poster posted only
to solve my request --- impressive and appreciated.