On 2016-05-20, Ethan Furman <et...@stoneleaf.us> wrote: > On 05/20/2016 04:55 AM, Jon Ribbens wrote: >> Certainly. "else:" is (almost?) invariably used in the situation where >> you are iterating through something in order to find a value which >> matches a certain condition. So the "for:" block means "find this >> value" and the "else:" means "else do this". > > I'm happy that you have a working mental model for for/else (seriously, > I am) but please don't discount the confusion and consternation for the > many folks who don't start with that mental model. > > The number of times I have /wanted/ to use the for/else structure for > searching is small (and I remember them both ;) -- every other time what > I wanted was an _else_ that ran iff the iterable was already empty when > the _for_ encountered it.
Well that's not a circumstance that's appropriate for the construct. Saying you want a different construct entirely is an entirely different argument. >> I would find that very confusing. "then:" makes it sound like >> executing that block is the usual case, when in practice it is >> usually the exception - the fallback code if the expected value >> was not found. > > If you don't take the extra step of _break_ it is the usual case. Having an "for: else:" clause without a "break" would be so unusual that it's literally nonexistent, because it would always be a bug. So no, it isn't the usual case for "for: else:". > But as others have said, this isn't going to change now, and I'm okay > with that. But, please, be a bit more understanding of those who don't > immediately grok the for/else and while/else loops. You're misunderstanding me. I'm not saying that the meaning of "for: else:" is 100% intuitively obvious. I'm saying that it's *more* obvious than it would be if it used any of the other existing keywords. I suppose I'm also saying that there isn't any other obvious word that could be made into a keyword that would be better than "else" (even if we assumed that adding a new keyword was a cost-free exercise). -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
