On 12 January 2014 16:17, Kay Hayen <kay.hayen@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello,

thanks for all the replies.

Of course I am aware that my use of the "else:" is different from the "break" case
when it comes to "return". For return, the "else:" is not needed, as it won't continue
the execution.

>     def _areConstants(expressions):
>         for expression in expressions:
>             if not expression.isExpressionConstantRef():
>                 break
>             if expression.isMutable():
>                 break
>         else:
>             return True
>         return False

That's not an improvement but also not the obvious way to rewrite the
code to suppress the, IMHO legitimate, warning.  Instead of introducing
``break``\s for an unnecessary ``else`` clause one could also just
remove that unnecessary ``else``::

Mind you, I am using the "else:" specifically to express, that I expect the loop
to return based on one element. I agree with you that the suggested code is
making that hard to discern and that removing the "else" clause is an option.

I'm reversing my earlier opinion ... if all the ways of breaking out of the loop are "return", the "else" is not needed and Pylint should point this out.
 

The thing is, I developed a style, where a return in the loop always leads to
a return in a else. It's the pick and choose method. So any time, I make
decisions based on an iterable, I do it like that.

def _areConstants(expressions):
    for expression in expressions:
        if not expression.isExpressionConstantRef():
            return False
        if expression.isMutable():
            return False
    return True

Which improves the situation in a way, because now the fellow Python
coder doesn't wonder where the ``break`` should be or if the author
understood the semantics of ``else`` on loop constructs.

That precisely is the question. Is the "else" an emphasis, or is it an error
indicator. I can assure you that I did it on purpose. But if nobody gets that,
it kinds of misses the point.

I take the general feedback to say "yes, using else: without need is a style
problem". So I will try and give it up. :-)
 
I would also avoid this question by using `all()` here.  :-)

I learned of "any" and "all" relatively late. I agree for booleans it's the better
choice, but it's another subject. Many times, it's not a boolean return value.

"Any" and "all" are just special cases of "max" and "min". ;)
And there are many other tools for processing lists without for-loops, e.g.: http://docs.python.org/3/library/itertools.html#itertools-recipes

- peter
 

Yours,
Kay
 

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