small code redundancy within while-loops (doesn't feel clean)
- by wallacoloo
So, in Python (though I think it can be applied to many languages), I find myself with something like this quite often:
the_input = raw_input("what to print?\n")
while the_input != "quit":
print the_input
the_input = raw_input("what to print?\n")
Maybe I'm being too picky, but I don't like how the line the_input = raw_input("what to print?\n") has to get repeated. It decreases maintainability and organization. But I don't see any workarounds for avoiding the duplicate code without further decreasing the problem. In some languages, I could write something like this:
while ((the_input=raw_input("what to print?\n")) != "quit") {
print the_input
}
This is definitely not Pythonic, and Python doesn't even allow for assignment within loop conditions AFAIK.
This valid code fixes the redundancy,
while 1:
the_input = raw_input("what to print?\n")
if the_input == "quit":
break
print the_input
But doesn't feel quite right either. The while 1 implies that this loop will run forever; I'm using a loop, but giving it a fake condition and putting the real one inside it.
Am I being too picky? Is there a better way to do this? Perhaps there's some language construct designed for this that I don't know of?
