Pythonic infinite for loop?

Thu Apr 14 22:33:46 EDT 2011

On 2011年4月15日 12:10:52 +1000, Chris Angelico wrote:
> Apologies for interrupting the vital off-topic discussion, but I have a
> real Python question to ask.

Sorry, you'll in the wrong forum for that.
*wink*
[...]
> My first draft looks something like this. The input dictionary is called
> dct, the output list is lst.
>> lst=[]
> for i in xrange(1,10000000): # arbitrary top, don't like this
> try:
> lst.append(parse_kwdlist(dct["Keyword%d"%i]))
> except KeyError:
> break
>> I'm wondering two things. One, is there a way to make an xrange object
> and leave the top off? 

No. But you can use an itertools.count([start=0]) object, and then catch 
the KeyError when you pass the end of the dict. But assuming keys are 
consecutive, better to do this:
lst = [parse_kwdlist(dct["Keyword%d"%i]) for i in xrange(1, len(dct)+1)]
If you don't care about the order of the results:
lst = [parse_kwdlist(value) for value in dct.values()]
-- 
Steven