On May 12, 3:46 pm, Grant Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 2008-05-12, Ben Finney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Paddy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > >> I've used Fortran and C and so would tend to use either i,j,k as the > >> unused loop variable above, or, for clarity, call it something > >> descriptive like loop_count, if the loop body would be clearer. > > > The problem with all of these names is that they also have long > > precedent as names of values that *will* be used inside the loop. > > I guess people who standardize on loop_count never nest loops. :) > > > Because of the precedent of those names, choosing one of those > > names doesn't make it clear to the reader that the value is > > never used; they have no indication from you of that until > > they look over the code a few times. It's implicit rather than > > explicit. > > And when somebody adds a nested loop things fall apart. I don't have an example to hand. A lot of casses of repeat_X_times inside a loop of repeat_Y_times would naturally be written as repeat_Y*X_times. Oh, wait a bit, <oversimplified_example_alert> for i in range(3): print "Stay!" for j in range(2): print "Come over." </oversimplified_example_alert>
Which could become: for outer_stay_repetions in range(3): print "Stay!" for inner_come_over_repetions in range(2): print "Come over." But the second is daft. Nested repeats don't neccessarily pose a problem to choosing meaningful names for repeat counters that are not going to be referenced in the loop body, and most times i,j,k are fine for used and un-used loop indices I find. - Paddy (Or were you just having a laugh ;-) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list