# Idiomatic loops¶

## Looping in general¶

In [ ]:
data = ['John', 'Doe', 'was', 'here']


Don't do it like this. While loops are actually really rarely needed.

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idx = 0
while idx < len(data):
print(data[idx])
idx += 1


Don't do like this either.

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for idx in range(len(data)):
print(data[idx])


### Do it like this!¶

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for item in data:
print(item)


If you need the index as well, you can use enumerate.

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for idx, val in enumerate(data):
print('{}: {}'.format(idx, val))


## Looping over a range of numbers¶

Don't do this.

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i = 0
while i < 6:
print(i)
i += 1


Don't do this either.

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for val in [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]:
print(val)


### Do it like this!¶

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for val in range(6):
print(val)


## Reversed looping¶

In [ ]:
data = ['first', 'to', 'last', 'from']


This is no good.

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i = len(data) - 1
while i >= 0:
print(data[i])
i -= 1


### Do it like this!¶

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for item in reversed(data):
print(item)


## Looping over n collections simultaneously¶

In [ ]:
collection1 = ['a', 'b', 'c']
collection2 = (10, 20, 30, 40, 50)
collection3 = ['John', 'Doe', True]


Oh boy, not like this.

In [ ]:
shortest = len(collection1)
if len(collection2) < shortest:
shortest = len(collection2)
if len(collection3) < shortest:
shortest = len(collection3)

i = 0
while i < shortest:
print(collection1[i], collection2[i], collection3[i])
i += 1


This is getting better but there's even a better way!

In [ ]:
shortest = min(len(collection1), len(collection2), len(collection3))
for i in range(shortest):
print(collection1[i], collection2[i], collection3[i])


### Do it like this!¶

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for first, second, third in zip(collection1, collection2, collection3):
print(first, second, third)


You can also create a dict out of two collections!

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my_dict = dict(zip(collection1, collection2))
print(my_dict)


## for - else - Checking for a match in a collection¶

Let's say we want to verify a certain condition is met by at least one element in a collection. Let's consider the following relatively naive example where we want to verify that at least one item is "python" (case insensitive) in data. If not, we'll raise a ValueError.

In [ ]:
data = [1, 2, 3, 'This', 'is', 'just', 'a', 'random', 'Python', 'list']


Don't do it like this

In [ ]:
found = False
for val in data:
if str(val).lower() == 'python':
found = True
break

for val in data: