More elegant way to try running a function X times?

[Boris Borcic]

Tim Chase wrote:
>>>> success = None
>>>> for i in range(5):
>>>>     #Try to fetch public IP
>>>>     success = CheckIP()
>>>>     if success:
>>>>         break
>>>> if not success:
>>>>     print "Exiting."
>>>>     sys.exit()
>>> Though a bit of an abuse, you can use
>>>
>>>   if not any(CheckIP() for _ in range(5)):
>>>     print "Exiting"
>>>     sys.exit()
>>
>> I don't see why you speak of abuse, bit of abuse would be, say if you 
>> replaced range(5) by '12345' to win a char; but otoh I think you 
>> misspelled any() for all().
> 
> The OP's code break'ed (broke?) upon the first success, rather than 
> checking all of them.  Thus, it would be any() rather than all().  Using 
> all() would require 5 successful calls to CheckIP(), rather than 
> one-out-of-five successful calls.

Right. So it could also be written " if all(not CheckIP()... ". Perhaps more 
closely re-telling the OP's ?

> 
> As for abuse, the "for _ in iterable" always feels a little hokey to 
> me.  It works, but feels warty.

I guess this means you did not learn Prolog before Python ?

Cheers, BB