"for" with "else"?

[Michael Geary]

Mark Jackson wrote:
> (This happens to be the *reverse* of what my intuition expects - it
> would seem more natural if the syntax meant "do this for loop to
> completion, else do this extra stuff," but this is the way it is and
> one must simply remember it.)

I'm with you there--the use of "else" here has seemed a bit confusing to me.

The use case that Alex just posted gave me another way to think about it:

    for item in allitems:
        if fraboozable(item):
            print "first fraboozable item is", item
            break
    else:
        print "Sorry, no item is fraboozable"

If I think of the else statement as being related to the if statement inside
the loop, then it makes some sense--the else statement is executed when the
if statement never comes up true. (It's twisted logic, I know, but at least
it helps me keep track of what "else" does here.)

-Mike