[Python-ideas] "While" suggestion

[Fred Drake]

On Jul 3, 2008, at 11:21 AM, Stavros Korokithakis wrote:
> That is quite a bit better than duplicating the assignment, but this  
> version duplicates the check (or rather defers it from the "while  
> <expression>" part to the "if" part). I am not sure that it is as  
> elegant as the proposed syntax...


The style with the check "in the middle", however, is fully general:  
you can do different checks at different points to determine when to  
break or skip the rest of the indented suite; the "while <expr> as  
<var>:" form only handles a specific case (though common).

The "while <expr> as <var>:" for has a certain level of attraction,  
because it does deal very well with a very common case, but I don't  
know that it would make that much difference in my code.

(Of course, for the specific use case being used to seed this  
discussion, the fileinput module may be helpful.)


   -Fred

-- 
Fred Drake   <fdrake at acm.org>