For loop comprehensions

[Benjamin S Wolf]

It occurred to me as I was writing a for loop that I would like to
write it in generator comprehension syntax, eg.

  for a in b if c:

rather than using one of the more verbose but allowable syntaxes:

  for a in (x for x in b if c):

  for a in b:
if not c: continue

Python 3.1 does not support "for comprehensions", and a few cursory
searches of PEPs and this list don't turn up anything. I like the idea
enough to suggest it though I'm unfamiliar with the PEP/feature
request process (PEP 1 pointed me here). What do other people think?

--Ben
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Re: For loop comprehensions

[Benjamin S Wolf]

On Feb 11, 3:47 pm, Westley Martínez  wrote:
> No, too confusing. Then people'll want compound loops e.g.:
>
> for a in b if c while d else return x:
>     print('Ha ha I'm so clever!')

On Feb 11, 6:34 pm, Steven D'Aprano  wrote:
> There's nothing wrong with writing
>
> for x in iterable:
>     if condition(x):
>         process(x)
>
> The existing syntax is clear and obvious. There's no clear benefit to
> shifting the if clause to the for expression: it complicates the parser,
> and any benefit (if any!) only applies to a tiny fraction of for loops.
> You save one line, which is trivial. You may save one indentation level,
> which might, sometimes, be useful, but more often will also be trivial.
> If there's an advantage to the suggestion, it's small.

My reasons for suggesting this are more to align for-loop syntax with
generator expression/list comprehension syntax than to add completely
new functionality to for-loops. I had observed that what I had typed
initially before realizing it was incorrect:

  for a in b if c:
f(a)

was equivalent (and nearly syntactically so) to

  [f(a) for a in b if c]

minus the generation of a list.

I understand there are more verbose ways to accomplish the same goal
(such as filter or multiple lines). But there are also more verbose
ways to construct a list (such as filter or multiple lines). That is
why I decided to suggest it.

On Feb 11, 7:54 pm, Terry Reedy  wrote:
> Already proposed and rejected. See archives for python-ideas or the
> gmane.comp.python.ideas mirror.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, and sorry for bringing
it up a third (if not more!) time.

For posterity, 
http://groups.google.com/group/python-ideas/browse_thread/thread/87eee156ac2c3a24/61621e7779b5b255,
and earlier, 
http://groups.google.com/group/python-ideas/browse_thread/thread/e2d076fe35ece873/862674672b4de683.

The latter brings up a good point about parsing: how will we be sure
after reading 'for a in b if c' whether this is a comprehension or
whether (b if c) begins a ternary expression (and we should expect a
'else d' to follow). Well, my suggestion is to bring for-loop syntax
in line with comprehension syntax, and:

>>> [a for a in range(10) if False else [99]]
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>> [a for a in (range(10) if False else [99])]
[99]
>>> for a in range(10) if False else [99]:
print(a)
...
99

So as it stands now in 3.1, comprehensions don't permit the ternary
expression without parenthesizing it, but for-loops do. So my
suggestion would have the side effect of requiring parentheses for
that latter expression, as comprehensions do. :/

Thanks again,
--Ben
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