Trick with the "for" statement in Python

Python's for statement has an useful feature. When iterating over a sequence using for, the variables declared in the statement's target list are still defined after the loop.

>>> for i in xrange(1, 10):
...     if i % 2 == 0 and i % 3 == 0:
...         break
...
>>> i
6

The infamous compiler Visual C++ 6 has a similar feature. But this feature is a non-standard C++ extension. Lots of programs wrote using Visual C++ 6 can not be compiled directly under others C++ compilers because of this. But since it is a standard Python feature there is no reason to avoid it in Python!

For example you can replace the following code

found_line_number = 0
# find the first line which contains non-ASCII character
for line_number, line in enumerate(my_file):
  try:
    line.decode('ascii')
  except UnicodeDecodeError, e:
    found_line_number = line_number
    break
print ('line %d contains non-ascii characters' %
found_line_number)

with

# find the first line which contains non-ASCII character
for line_number, line in enumerate(my_file):
  try:
    line.decode('ascii')
  except UnicodeDecodeError, e:
    break
print 'line %d contains non-ascii characters' % line_number

(This example assumes there is at least one line which contains a non-ASCII character)

The code is shorter and clearer. When using this construct, the code wont always be shorter, but it will certainly be clearer and easier to understand. Even to those who don't know the trick, since it is easily understandable.

Don't wait for an occasion to use this shortcut. Review your code immediately and remove all those variables you used just to find the first whatever you were looking for in a for loop!