Looping from 1 to infinity in Python

Question

In C, I would do this:

int i;
for (i = 0;; i++)
  if (thereIsAReasonToBreak(i))
    break;

How can I achieve something similar in Python?

Answer 1

Reiterating thg435's comment:

from itertools import takewhile, count

def thereIsAReasonToContinue(i):
    return not thereIsAReasonToBreak(i)

for i in takewhile(thereIsAReasonToContinue, count()):
    pass # or something else

Or perhaps more concisely:

from itertools import takewhile, count

for i in takewhile(lambda x : not thereIsAReasonToBreak(x), count()):
    pass # or something else

takewhile imitates a "well-behaved" C for loop: you have a continuation condition, but you have a generator instead of an arbitrary expression. There are things you can do in a C for loop that are "badly behaved", such as modifying i in the loop body. It's possible to imitate those too using takewhile, if the generator is a closure over some local variable i that you then mess with. In a way, defining that closure makes it especially obvious that you're doing something potentially confusing with your control structure.