Python: 'break' outside loop

Question

in the following python code:

narg=len(sys.argv)
print \"@length arg= \", narg
if narg == 1:
        print \"@Usage: input_filename nelements nintervals\"
           


        

Answer 1

break breaks out of a loop, not an if statement, as others have pointed out. The motivation for this isn't too hard to see; think about code like

for item in some_iterable:
    ...
    if break_condition():
        break 

The break would be pretty useless if it terminated the if block rather than terminated the loop -- terminating a loop conditionally is the exact thing break is used for.