[Tutor] design question -- nested loops considered harmful?

[Liam Clarke]

Oh, -1 is the index of the last element?



On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 05:48:43 -0500, Kent Johnson <kent37 at tds.net> wrote:
> Liam Clarke wrote:
> > x=file('Brian's source file') 'r')
> > a=x.readlines() #How big is it? If it's a huge file, this may not be the best
> > x.close()
> > a="".join(a) #Turns a list into a string
> 
> a = x.read() is simpler
> 
> 
> 
> > If there are multiple occurrences, all you have to do is -
> >
> > for item in item_flags:
> >
> >   foundIndice=[]
> >   findIndex=0
> >   startIndex=0
> >
> >   while findIndex ! = -1:
> >           findIndex=string2FindIn.find(item, startIndex)
> >           foundIndice.append(findIndex)
> >
> >   del foundIndice[len(foundIndice)-1] #Delete last item, as .find
> > returns "-1" for string not
> >                                                     #found, and this
> > will always be appended at end.
> >    data_dict[item]=foundIndice
> 
> I don't like this 'fix up the list after the loop' style. I would write
> it like this:
> 
>    index= -1
>    while True:
>          index=string2FindIn.find(item, index+1)
>          if index== -1:
>              break
>          foundIndice.append(index)
> 
> Alternatively, foundIndice.pop() or del foundIndice[-1] is an easy way
> to remove the last element.
> 
> Kent
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> 
> 
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