break in a module

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, 16 Jun 2011 22:20:50 -0700, Erik Max Francis wrote:

[...]
> Yes, which could be rephrased as the fact that `break` and `continue`
> are restricted to looping control structures, so reusing `break` in this
> context would be a bad idea.  You know, kind of like the exact point I
> made earlier which you're trying to nitpick in another reply.

No offense is intended Erik, but in my experience, when people complain 
about others nitpicking, they've usually said something which is *almost* 
correct, i.e. wrong :)

Can we agree that the plain English verb "break", as in "to break out 
of", can apply to any of:

* returning from a function
* yielding from an interator or generator
* raising an exception
* jumping via a GOTO (in languages that have GOTOs)
* exiting a loop via a break
* or any other way of exiting from a code block that I may have missed

and that only the fifth applies to the Python keyword "break"?

If we were to have a "exit this module early, but without exiting Python 
altogether" statement, I'd consider "exit" to be the most descriptive 
name, although it would clash with existing uses of the word, e.g. 
sys.exit(). Overloading "break" strikes me as disagreeable, but not as 
disagreeable as overloading "return" or "in" :)



-- 
Steven