'While' question

[Ben Keshet]

Thanks for the reference.  I tried it with a general example and got it 
to work - I used an index that counts up to a threshold that is set to 
break.  It does not work though with my real code. I suspect this is 
because I cannot really read any lines from an empty file, so the code 
gets stuck even before I get to j=j+1:

line = f.readline()[:-1]
            j=0
            while 'PRIMARY' not in line:
                line = f.readline()[:-1]
                j=j+1              
                if j==30:
                   break               

Any suggestions?

BK


Wojtek Walczak wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Aug 2008 18:01:25 -0400, Ben Keshet wrote:
>   
>> somehow. I use 'while 'word' not in line' to recognize words in the 
>> texts. Sometimes, the files are empty, so while doesn't find 'word' and 
>> runs forever. I have two questions:
>> 1) how do I overcome this, and make the script skip the empty files? 
>> (should I use another command?)
>> 2) how do I interrupt the code without closing Python? (I have ActivePython)
>>     
>
> Try the docs first. You need to read about 'continue' and
> 'break' statements: http://docs.python.org/tut/node6.html
>
> HTH.
>
>