In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Terry Reedy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> "Alvin A. Delagon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message > news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > I've been hearing comments that infinite loop is a bad programming > > practice. > > What is bad is an *unintended* loop that goobles cpu time while outputting > nothing. Example: > > def fact(n): > res = 1 > while n != 0: > res *= n > n -= 1 > return res > > fact(-1) > > Now imagine that you are paying $360/hr ($.10/sec) (for IBM mainframe time) > and you should understand the bad reputation (and why jobs were submitted > with a time limit!). ;-) > > Terry Jan Reedy Could be worse. You could have written: def fact(n): if n == 0: return 1 else: return n * fact (n-1) then you would have not only gotten zonked on CPU charges, but on memory charges as well :-) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
