Xah Lee wrote: > In imperative languages such as Perl and Python > and Java, in general it is not safe to delete > elements when looping thru a list-like entity. > (it screws up the iteration) One must make a > copy first, and work with the copy.
Correction: When looping thru a list-like entity and delete elements in the vary list, there's a question whether it will change the iteration. (For example, if one loops thru 1 to 9, and deleted 8 while at 2, should the loop still do 8?) This is a design issue. Both behavior are useful. For some languages and or list entities, the answer may be yes or no. However, in imperative languages such as Perl and Python and Java, often modifying a list while looping simply cannot be done, justified as a protection to safeguard programers as ignoramuses, but partially because the internal issues of these languages. (These languages have molded a generation of programers to question and discourse man-made complexities.) The work around in these languages is always to make a copy of the list-entity, and work with the copy. Xah [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
