[Python-ideas] Generator syntax hooks?

[Nick Coghlan]

On 11 August 2017 at 06:53, Spencer Brown <spencerb21 at live.com> wrote:
> The logical solution to me is to allow any order of while and if, and follow
> the same 'rule' as multiple for loops - just nest/test those in that order.
> Then you can have whatever priority you need. One question though is how
> this should handle multiple loops - break all of them, or just the current
> one?

This is why I think a for-while construct in comprehensions would
really only make sense in combination with a *statement* level
for-while construct, as the problem we have is:

- a termination condition can't readily use "if" (even in combination
with "break") because that's visually and syntactically ambiguous with
a filter condition
- a naive translation of a "while" based syntax makes it look like a
nested *non-terminating* loop

Both of those problems may be resolved if a "for-while" loop exists as
a top level looping construct that can terminate based on *either* an
iterator being exhausted *or* a condition becoming false.

The question then becomes whether or not a "for-while" loop is
actually useful enough to be added as a general construct, given that
we already have "if not condition: break" as a way of modeling a loop
ending early because a condition became false.

One way to gather evidence on that front would be to survey the
standard library for places where we use "break", and see if any of
them would be more readable given a for-while construct, whether as a
statement, or as part of the comprehension syntax. (Note: I'm not
interested enough in the idea to do that evidence gathering myself,
I'm just pointing it out in case anyone is curious enough to take the
time to collect those details)

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia