The rap against "while True:" loops

[Mensanator]

On Oct 12, 1:02�pm, John Reid <j.r... at mail.cryst.bbk.ac.uk> wrote:
> Mensanator wrote:
> > On Oct 12, 3:36 am, greg <g... at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> >> Mensanator wrote:
> >>> while not done:
> >>> ...
> >>> if n==1: done = True
> >>> ...
> >> Seems to me that 'while not done:' is no better than
> >> 'while True:', because in both cases you have to look
> >> inside the loop to find out what the exit condition
> >> is.
>
> >> Using a more meaningful name for the flag can help,
> >> but you can't teach someone that just by giving them
> >> an overly simplified rules such as "never use
> >> while True:". They'll probably just replace it with
> >> 'while not done:' and think they've improved things,
> >> without ever really understanding the issue.
>
> > You're missing the point. It's not that you have to
> > look inside for the terminating condition. It's that
> > you don't need a break.
>
> Nothing wrong with a having a break IMHO.

My opinion is that there is everything wrong with
having a break. I don't think I have ever used one,
I write code that doesn't depend on that crutch.

>
> while not done:
>
> seems very dangerous to me as you'd have to
>
> del done
>
> before writing the same construct again. That's the sort of thing that
> leads to errors.

Duh. I won't write silly code like that either.
If I need more than one loop structure then I'll
do something like

    while not done_with_this


    while not done_with_that

Besides, since I _always_ initialize the flag
before entering a loop, the flag can be reused
and doesn't have to be deleted (as long as the
loops aren't nested). And since I don't use goto,
there's no chance the initialization can be avoided.

The best way to avoid the pitfalls of spaghetti
code is to not write it in the first place.