On Wed, May 01, 2002 at 09:03:42AM -0500, Jonathan Scott Duff wrote: > > Hmm. I wonder why the python community (apparently) have no problems > with elses on loops: > > 7.2 The while statement > > The while statement is used for repeated execution as long as an > expression is true: > > while_stmt ::= "while" expression ":" suite > ["else" ":" suite] > > That's straight from http://www.python.org/doc/current/ref/while.html. > If you read the page though, you'll see that their meaning isn't > dwimmery at all. The else block is executed whenever the expression > evaluates to false which could be if there's nothing to iterate over > or just after the last iteration.
If you abstract the meaning of C<else> to "execute when the condition in the previous block is false" this makes perfect sense. It's just not very useful. This is actually a good reason for Perl to use a different keyword than "else" with loops. You avoid that interpretation entirely. You also avoid totally annoying Pythonists who occasionally use (and might be converted to) Perl. :) Allison
