If/then style question

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:53:45 -0500, Steve Holden wrote about for...else:

> This construct appears to be unpopular in actual use, and when it comes
> up in classes and seminars there is always interesting debate as people
> discuss potential uses and realise there are useful applications.

Yes, I find I don't need it often, but it is useful from time to time.

I wonder whether it would have been more useful to reverse the sense of 
the else, and have it run only if the for loop *didn't* run to 
completion. That seemed more intuitive to me, and I've wanted to do this 
more than once. Here's a toy example:

for x in sequence:
    if x == "spam":
        print("exiting early")
        break
    elif x == "ham":
        print("exiting early")
        break
    do_something(x)


would become:

for x in sequence:
    if x == "spam":
        break
    elif x == "ham":
        break
    do_something(x)
else:
    print("exiting early")



> I think the choice of keyword is probably not Guido's crowning language
> achievement, but then since the English keywords don't make natural
> sense to those who speak other languages it's at least fair that there
> should be one that isn't totally natural to English speakers. A small
> price to pay for all the other keywords not being Dutch.

Indeed :)




-- 
Steven