Can't get around "IndexError: list index out of range"

[Terry Reedy]

"MonkeeSage" <MonkeeSage at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:1160455280.118212.202770 at b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> But even so, here is a simple use case from the standard library
> (python 2.5 release source):
>
> In Libs/site.py, lines 302-306:
>
>            try:
>                for i in range(lineno, lineno + self.MAXLINES):
>                    print self.__lines[i]
>            except IndexError:
>                break

Is there an outer loop being 'break'ed?  If not, it should be pass instead.

> With my proposal, that could be written as:
>
>            for i in range(lineno, lineno + self.MAXLINES):
>                if self.__lines.has_index(i):
>                    print self.__lines[i]
>                else:
>                    break

This break is swallowed by the for loop, so not exactly equivalent, I 
think.  In any case, these are both clumsy and I believe I would instead 
write something like

for i in range(lineno, len(self.__lines)):
  print self.__lines[i]

or even better, use islice -- for line in islice(...): print line
So not a persuasive use case to me.

Terry Jan Reedy