Enumerate question: Inner looping like in Perl

[Pekka Niiranen]

Hi,

I have Perl code looping thru lines in the file:

line: while (<INFILE>) {
	...
	$_ = do something
	...
	if (/#START/) {
		# Start inner loop
		while (<INFILE>) {
                     if (/#END/) {
                         next line;
		    }
		}
	}
	if (/#BLAH1/) {
		$_ = do something
	}
	if (/#BLAH2/) {
		$_ = do something
	}
}


I decided to use enumerate() in my Python version
since current line must be modified (the $_ = idiom in Perl)

---code starts---

fh = codecs.open(f_path, "rU", "utf-8")
contents = fh.readlines()
fh.close()

# Precompile regular expressions (speed hack?)
findSTART = r'#START'
matcherSTART = re.compile(findSTART, re.UNICODE)
findEND = r'#END'
matcherEND = re.compile(findEND, re.UNICODE)


for i, row in enumerate(contents):
	row[i] = something
	if matcherSTART.search(row):
		"Oops! how to advance 'i' and 'row' untill:
		if matcherEND.search(row):
			continue

---code ends---

I could create extra parameter to store the state of the loop like:

foundSTART = False
for i, row in enumerate(contents):
	if foundSTART:
		if not matcherEND.search(row):
			continue
		else:
			foundSTART = False
	else:
		if matcherSTART.search(row):
			foundSTART = True
		if foundBLAH1:
			row[i] = something
		if foundBLAH2:
			row[i] = something

but is this it really more maintainable code?

Is there enumerate() hack that I am missing or
should I go back to idiom?:

for i in range(len(contents)):
	if matcherSTART.search(row[i]):
		while not matcherEND.search(row[i]):
			i = i + 1
			continue


-pekka-