Pythonic infinite for loop?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, 15 Apr 2011 12:10:52 +1000, Chris Angelico wrote:

> Apologies for interrupting the vital off-topic discussion, but I have a
> real Python question to ask.

Sorry, you'll in the wrong forum for that.

*wink*

[...]
> My first draft looks something like this. The input dictionary is called
> dct, the output list is lst.
> 
> lst=[]
> for i in xrange(1,10000000): # arbitrary top, don't like this
>   try:
>     lst.append(parse_kwdlist(dct["Keyword%d"%i]))
>   except KeyError:
>     break
> 
> I'm wondering two things. One, is there a way to make an xrange object
> and leave the top off? 

No. But you can use an itertools.count([start=0]) object, and then catch 
the KeyError when you pass the end of the dict. But assuming keys are 
consecutive, better to do this:

lst = [parse_kwdlist(dct["Keyword%d"%i]) for i in xrange(1, len(dct)+1)]

If you don't care about the order of the results:

lst = [parse_kwdlist(value) for value in dct.values()]




-- 
Steven