[ESR]
There's not much I miss from C these days, but one thing I wish Python had is a more general for-loop. The C semantics that let you have any initialization, any termination test, and any iteration you like are rather cool.
Yes, I realize that
for (<init>; <test>; <step>) {<body>}
can be simulated with:
<init> while 1: if <test>: break <body>
Still, having them spatially grouped the way a C for does it is nice. Makes it easier to see invariants, I think.
Hm, I've seen too many ugly C for loops to have much appreciation for it. I can recognize and appreciate the few common forms that clearly iterate over an array; most other forms look rather contorted to me. Check out the Python C sources; if you find anything more complicated than ``for (i = n; i > 0; i--)'' I probably didn't write it. :-) Common abominations include: - writing a while loop as for(;<test>;) - putting arbitrary initialization code in <init> - having an empty condition, so the <step> becomes an arbitraty extension of the body that's written out-of-sequence --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)