[Python-ideas] "While" suggestion

[Thomas Lee]

Oops. George and Facundo beat me to the iterator suggestion. :)

Cheers,
T

Thomas Lee wrote:
> Stavros Korokithakis wrote:
>> I don't think they do, if I'm not mistaken the only way is to call 
>> read() and see if it returns the empty string. I agree that this 
>> would be better, but the use case I mentioned is not the only one 
>> this would be useful in... Unfortunately I can't think of any right now, 
> :)
>> but there have been a few times when I had to initialise things 
>> outside the loop and it always strikes me as ugly.
>>
> Well that depends, on the situation really. The only use case I can 
> think of is exactly the one you mentioned. And since you can't think 
> of any other scenarios where such a thing might be handy, I've got no 
> better suggestion to offer.
>
> If you can conjure up another scenario, post it back here and we'll 
> see if we can generalize the pattern a little.
>
> In the meantime, I'd love a way to check if a file is at its end 
> without having to read data out of it ...
>
> Cheers,
> T
>
> P.S. you might be interested in using something like the following to 
> hide the ugliness in a function:
>
> def reader(stream, size):
>  data = stream.read(size)
>  while data:
>    yield data
>    data = stream.read(size)
>
> Then you could use it as follows:
>
> for block in reader(my_file, 1024):
>  do_something(block)
>> Thomas Lee wrote:
>>> It's not currently possible to determine if a file/stream is at its 
>>> end, is it?
>>>
>>> If that were the case you could easily do the read before your 
>>> do_something call. Something like:
>>>
>>> while not my_file.eof:
>>>  data = my_file.read(1024)
>>>  do_something(data)
>>>
>>> Can anyone explain why file objects don't support some sort of eof 
>>> check? Something gives me the impression that it was an intentional 
>>> decision.
>>>
>>> IMO something like this would be better than more syntax.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> T
>>>
>>> Stavros Korokithakis wrote:
>>>> Hello all,
>>>> I have noticed that sometimes "while" loops produce "unpythonic" 
>>>> patterns, such as the following:
>>>>
>>>> data = my_file.read(1024)
>>>> while data:
>>>>     do_something(data)
>>>>     data = my_file.read(1024)
>>>>
>>>> The assignment is repeated, which is less than optimal. Since we 
>>>> don't have a while statement that does the check in the end, would 
>>>> it not be better if the syntax of while could be amended to  
>>>> include something like this (in the spirit of the new "with" 
>>>> keyword)?:
>>>>
>>>> while my_file.read(1024) as data:
>>>>    do_something(data)
>>>>
>>>> This would terminate the loop when myfile.read() evaluated to 
>>>> False, and it is more pythonic than repeating onesself.
>>>>
>>>> I contacted GvR about this, and he replied that this syntax would 
>>>> have to be part of the expression than part of the while, which I 
>>>> agree would be less than ideal. However, I don't see why it would 
>>>> have to be part of the expression, since the "while" could easily 
>>>> assign the value of the expression to the variable and break if it 
>>>> evaluates to False.
>>>>
>>>> I would appreciate any thoughts on this,
>>>> Stavros Korokithakis
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>> Python-ideas at python.org
>>>> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas
>>>>   
>>>
>
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