Raymond Hettinger once said “if you mutate something while you’re iterating over it,
you’re living in a state of sin and deserve whatever happens to you”. Recent version
of Python actually does not allow you mutate a dictionary while looping over it. Here are
some test code.
Python 3.7.4 (default, Sep 20 2019, 00:15:38)
[GCC 7.4.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> d = {'matthew': 'blue', 'rachel': 'green', 'raymond': 'red'}
>>> d
{'matthew': 'blue', 'rachel': 'green', 'raymond': 'red'}
>>> for k in d:
... print (k)
...
>>> d2 = d.copy()
>>> for k in d.keys():
... if k.startswith('r'):
... del d[k]
...
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
RuntimeError: dictionary changed size during iteration
Sometimes “mutate while looping” is necessary and it can make code simpler. Here is an example (modified) from Chapter 6 of Al Sweigart’s Automate The Boring Stuff With Python book.
def prefix(word):
prefixnonletters = ''
while len(word) > 0 and not word[0].isalpha():
prefixnonletters += word[0]
word = word[1:]
return prefixnonletters, word
This function separates a word (e.g., ‘123word’) into two parts: the prefix non-letter part (‘123’) and following letter part (‘word’). The code loops over the input word and mutates it in the loop body. It is difficult to write the function in other ways. One alternative way I can think of is to use regular expression.
def prefix_re(word):
import re
m = re.match(r'([^A-Za-z]+)(\w*)', word)
if m:
return m.group(1), m.group(2)
else:
return '', word