No "side effect" assignment!

[Christopher A. Craig]

afriere at yahoo.co.uk (Asun Friere) writes:

> I am alone in feeling some slight unease at the sight of "while 1: ...
> break"?  I know this is considered somewhat pythonic, but apart from
> the fact that there is only a single assignment statement is there
> really any advantage to be gained by doing it this way?  It seems to
> be trading one aesthetic disadvantage for another, and imho, a
> marginally less legible one.

While I agree with you, I don't think I'd bother with changing thel
language now to fix it.  If I were writing a new language I'd prefer a
loop-and-a-half structure something like this:

repeat:
  stuff
while test:
  stuff

I'd really prefer something like the above without the second colon.
While it's nice to have the condition dedented for readability, it
isn't really starting a new block.  At any rate, I don't think adding
this to the current language is worth it, so I'll keep using "while 1:
break" structures and translating to the above in my head.

-- 
Christopher A. Craig <list-python at ccraig.org>
"So we who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members
one of another."  Romans 12:5 (NASB)