On Fri, Oct 16, 2020 at 02:14:27AM +0100, Rob Cliffe via Python-ideas wrote:
You mean like.... a goto statement? I'm not sure what a "pseudo-loop" is, other than a way to use break as goto.
ChrisA
Is that bad? As I tried to explain, sometimes a process may need to be abandoned at multiple points instead of running to completion (it may succeed early or fail early).
The usual way to handle that is by returning from a function, as you point out.
If the process were in a dedicated function, this would be done by multiple return statements, and nobody would raise an eyebrow.
There are a (very small?) number of people who would raise an eyebrow, as they insist on a strict view of "Single entry, single exit" and would argue against both break and early return from a function. http://wiki.c2.com/?SingleFunctionExitPoint I'm not one of them :-)
However, sometimes it is not convenient to hive the process off into its own function (it might necessitate passing and receiving long hard-to-maintain lists of what used to be local variables).
Hmmm, well, I won't categorically say you *must* use a function, but I will say that using a function is probably the best solution. If you nest your function inside the major function, you don't even need to pass arguments: def function(a, b, c, d, e): # More local variables: f, g, h = 1, 2, 3 def inner(): # all locals a...h are visible in here return result thing = inner() so you may be able to move your processing to an inner function, without needing to explicit pass any arguments to it, and make use of return, rather than adding a loop so you can use break. -- Steve