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Re: Nested iteration?

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On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 1:40 AM, Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> wrote:
> In reviewing somebody else's code today, I found the following
> construct (eliding some details):
>
>     f = open(filename)
>     for line in f:
>         if re.search(pattern1, line):
>             outer_line = f.next()
>             for inner_line in f:
>                 if re.search(pattern2, inner_line):
>                     inner_line = f.next()
>
> Somewhat to my surprise, the code worked.  I didn't know it was legal
> to do nested iterations over the same iterable (not to mention mixing
> calls to next() with for-loops).  Is this guaranteed to work in all
> situations?

The definition of the for loop is sufficiently simple that this is
safe, with the caveat already mentioned (that __iter__ is just
returning self). And calling next() inside the loop will simply
terminate the loop if there's nothing there, so I'd not have a problem
with code like that - for instance, if I wanted to iterate over pairs
of lines, I'd happily do this:

for line1 in f:
  line2=next(f)
  print(line2)
  print(line1)

That'll happily swap pairs, ignoring any stray line at the end of the
file. Why bother catching StopIteration just to break?

ChrisA

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Thread

Nested iteration? roy@panix.com (Roy Smith) - 2013-04-23 11:40 -0400
  Re: Nested iteration? Oscar Benjamin <oscar.j.benjamin@gmail.com> - 2013-04-23 17:05 +0100
  Re: Nested iteration? Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2013-04-23 10:05 -0600
  Re: Nested iteration? Peter Otten <__peter__@web.de> - 2013-04-23 18:15 +0200
  Re: Nested iteration? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-04-24 02:21 +1000
  Re: Nested iteration? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2013-04-23 16:35 +0000
  Re: Nested iteration? Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2013-04-23 10:30 -0600
  Re: Nested iteration? Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2013-04-23 10:39 -0600
  Re: Nested iteration? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-04-24 02:42 +1000
    Re: Nested iteration? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2013-04-23 16:53 +0000
  Re: Nested iteration? Terry Jan Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2013-04-23 16:49 -0400
  Re: Nested iteration? Joshua Landau <joshua.landau.ws@gmail.com> - 2013-04-23 22:14 +0100
  Re: Nested iteration? Oscar Benjamin <oscar.j.benjamin@gmail.com> - 2013-04-23 22:29 +0100
  Re: Nested iteration? Joshua Landau <joshua.landau.ws@gmail.com> - 2013-04-23 22:41 +0100
  Re: Nested iteration? Oscar Benjamin <oscar.j.benjamin@gmail.com> - 2013-04-23 23:42 +0100

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