Michael Selik <michael.se...@gmail.com>: > On Wed, Apr 6, 2016, 12:51 PM Marko Rauhamaa <ma...@pacujo.net> wrote: > >> Really, there's only one high-level construct you can't live without: >> the "while" statement. Virtually every Python program has at least >> one "while" statement, and in general, it is unavoidable. >> >> Basic programs, on the other hand, don't need that meaningless >> buzzword, but can live just fine with GOTO. > > You don't need WHILE or GOTO, you can just copy-paste code. You > probably need an IF at some point.
Seriously, Python wouldn't be, couldn't be Turing-complete without "while" (mainly because it doesn't support tail-recursion elimination). Now, if Python had an unlimited range() iterator/iterable, you could use a "for" statement to emulate "while". As it stands, Python without "while" could only compute primitive-recursive functions. However, you only need "while" a maximum of one time in your whole program to perform an arbitrary computation. Marko -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
