Right, break statements and why they’re bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Generally it’s indicating you’ve got a problem with the flow of your program and you may need to restructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Imagine the following that hunts for a number, it’s an odd program, but it’s an illustration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This program will loop up until 56. If you’re trying to debug a \nprogram 100x more complex then this and it has a similar format over 100\n lines, you’ve got a loop which says it’s counting from 0 to 100, yet \nit’s only going to 56. To figure out why you’ve got to hunt through and \nfind a break statement and figure out what it applies to – which bit \nit’s ‘break’ing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Consider the alternative:<\/p>\n\n\n\n These programs are identical, the second has a bit more faff with \ndeclaring and incrementing i, but it’s a conditional loop. The first one\n is an unconditional loop you’re trying to hack into a conditional loop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you’re in a sodding hotel in Africa and hunting through lines of \ncode at 3 in the morning trying to find an issue so you can fix the \nproblem and actually go home but the developers have gone home because \n“it’s gone 4:30pm and they wanted to miss the traffic” then you will \nappreciate the second being easier to understand and debug than the \nfirst.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Look at the condition on the first, it’s looping to 100….but the result is that it doesn’t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Look at the condition on the first, it’s looping to x…..and that’s what’s happening. Clarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hopefully that’s fairly clear. Generally I appreciate people finding solutions, but break is one command that I think shouldn’t exist as it’s just a plaster for bad structure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n People will have different view points, people will say that I’m wrong, and I respect that, provided there’s justification. I can accept there are some circumstances where a break statement is good, but they’re specifics, I don’t believe it should be used as a general tool to be wielded with frequency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Right, break statements and why they’re bad. Generally it’s indicating you’ve got a problem with the flow of your program and you may need to restructure. Imagine the following that hunts for a number, it’s an odd program, but it’s an illustration. # x = some number you’re hunting forx = 56for i in range(100): …. Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8,7,10],"class_list":["post-92","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-level","tag-a-level","tag-essays","tag-programming"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reghif.co.uk\/teach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reghif.co.uk\/teach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reghif.co.uk\/teach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reghif.co.uk\/teach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reghif.co.uk\/teach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/reghif.co.uk\/teach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93,"href":"https:\/\/reghif.co.uk\/teach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions\/93"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reghif.co.uk\/teach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reghif.co.uk\/teach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reghif.co.uk\/teach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}# x = some number you're hunting for
x = 56
for i in range(100):
if i == x:<\/code> print(\"Found x!\")<\/code> break<\/code> else:<\/code> print(i, \"isn't x\")<\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\nx = 56
i = -1
while i != x:
i = i + 1
if i == x:
print(\"Found x!\")
else:<\/code> print(i, \"isn't x\")<\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n