breaking out of nested loop

[Raymond Hettinger]

[rbt]
> What is the appropriate way to break out of this while loop if the for
> loop finds a match?
>
> while 1:
>     for x in xrange(len(group)):
>         try:
>             mix = random.sample(group, x)
>             make_string = ''.join(mix)
>             n = md5.new(make_string)
>             match = n.hexdigest()
>             if match == target:
>                 print "Collision!!!"
>                 print make_string
> 		Stop = time.strftime("%H:%M:%S-%m-%d-%y", time.localtime())
> 		print "Stop", Stop
>                 break
>             else:
>                 continue
>         except Exception, e:
>             print e

I would wrap the whole thing in a function definition.  When you find a
match, just return from the function.  Besides cleanly exiting from
multiple loops, the function approach usually leads to better factoring
(in this case, segregating the search logic from everything else).


Raymond