On 1 December 2011 03:15, Roy Smith <r...@panix.com> wrote: > I need to try a bunch of names in sequence until I find one that works > (definition of "works" is unimportant). The algorithm is: > > 1) Given a base name, "foo", first see if just plain "foo" works. > > 2) If not, try "foo-1", "foo-2", and so on > > 3) If you reach "foo-20", give up. > > What would you say if you saw this: > > for suffix in [''] + [str(i) for i in xrange(-1, -20, -1)]: >
It's a little obfuscated ;) I would go for the simple: for i in xrange(21): suffix = "-%s" % i if i else "" .... -- Arnaud -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list