while (a=b()) ...
Johann Hibschman
johann at physics.berkeley.edu
Sat May 1 19:54:06 EDT 1999
Derek T Jones writes:
> In article <slrn7ii759.eoc.wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net>,
> wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net wrote:
>> On Thu, 29 Apr 1999 16:48:39 -0700 (PDT), Nathan Clegg wrote:
>> >I have some deep-rooted "hates" in programming and don't even know where
>> >some of them came from. One of them is "while 1" loops. They seem
>> >somehow at the same level as goto statements and should be used, in my
>> >mind, about as rarely.
>>
>> I agree. Especially since while(1) loops require the use of a goto inside
>> of them.
> I disagree. A 'break' is not a 'goto'. The language Icon, which was
> part of Python's inspiration, has a 'repeat' loop which can only be
> broken out of with a 'break' statement. The idea of a loop whose exit
> condition must be, for design reasons, not either at the very beginning or
> the very end of the loop is not a kluge.
Yes, but there has to be a better way than "while 1", which abuses the
abstraction of the while loop.
If python were a little more efficient in dealing with function
calls, you could do all sorts of things like
def process_chars ():
c = curs.fetchone ()
if c:
print c
process_chars ()
process_chars ()
Function calls are nice, right? Tail recursion is good. (Python 2.0,
perhaps? Scheme's been around for a long time, so it's not new
technology.)
--
Johann Hibschman johann at physics.berkeley.edu
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