[Tutor] Silly loop question

[Kent Johnson]

mailing list wrote:
> Hi all, 
> 
> I should know this, but it seems to elude me at present. 
> 
> I have a loop which is looping through a line of chars by index. 
> 
> So, one of these -  
> 
> for i in range(len(line)):
> 
> 
> Now, question is, is there a simple way to 'fast forward'  index i?
> 
> At the moment, I'm doing it like this - 
> 
> changeIndex = None
> al = len(line)
> for i in range(al):
> 
>          if changeIndex and (i < changeIndex):
>              continue
> 
>         if line[i] == "{":
> 		nextRightBracket = line.find("}",i)
>                 #other stuff happens
>                 changeIndex = nextRightBracket + 1

I would do this with a while loop and an explicit index counter:

al = len(line)
i = 0
while i < al:
        if line[i] == "{":
		nextRightBracket = line.find("}",i)
                #other stuff happens
                i = nextRightBracket + 1
	else:
		i += 1

You could also make a custom iterator that you could set but it doesn't seem worth the trouble. If you just had to skip one or two values I would make an explicit iterator and call next() on it, but to advance an arbitrary amount that is awkward.

Kent