21

How to increment the outer iterator from the inner loop?

To be more precise:

  for i in range(0,6):
    print i
    for j in range(0,5):
      i = i+2

I am getting

0
1
2
3
4
5

, but I want 0,2,4

Above is the simpilfied idea what I want to acheive.

Here is my Java code:

str1="ababa"
str2="aba"
for(int i =0; i < str1.length; i++)
  for(int j =0; j < str2.length; j++)
       if str1[i+j]!=str[j]
           break;
       if( j ==str2.length -1)
           i=i+str2.length;
4
  • It is not very clear what you really need - provide us with the real case and we will answer you. In any case from your sample is not clear why you need to set i > then 9 - i mean for what reason you need to increment it at the end Commented Nov 16, 2012 at 4:31
  • i simplified my question Commented Nov 16, 2012 at 4:37
  • It still not clear for me to get 0,2,4 you can use range(0,6,2) Commented Nov 16, 2012 at 4:38
  • i simplified by question , you can see my java version.. Commented Nov 16, 2012 at 4:43

5 Answers 5

21

It seems that you want to use step parameter of range function. From documentation:

range(start, stop[, step]) This is a versatile function to create lists containing arithmetic progressions. It is most often used in for loops. The arguments must be plain integers. If the step argument is omitted, it defaults to 1. If the start argument is omitted, it defaults to 0. The full form returns a list of plain integers [start, start + step, start + 2 * step, ...]. If step is positive, the last element is the largest start + i * step less than stop; if step is negative, the last element is the smallest start + i * step greater than stop. step must not be zero (or else ValueError is raised). Example:

 >>> range(10) [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
 >>> range(1, 11) [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
 >>> range(0, 30, 5) [0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25]
 >>> range(0, 10, 3) [0, 3, 6, 9]
 >>> range(0, -10, -1) [0, -1, -2, -3, -4, -5, -6, -7, -8, -9]
 >>> range(0) []
 >>> range(1, 0) []

In your case to get [0,2,4] you can use:

range(0,6,2)

OR in your case when is a var:

idx = None
for i in range(len(str1)):
    if idx and i < idx:
        continue
    for j in range(len(str2)):
        if str1[i+j] != str2[j]:
            break
    else:
        idx = i+j
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2 Comments

thankyou!, kind of , but my step parameter is a variable.. not a fixed constant, see my java version code.. t
You are welcome, there sould be other ways to do this is just a sample of how it can be
10

You might just be better of using while loops rather than for loops for this. I translated your code directly from the java code.

str1 = "ababa"
str2 = "aba"
i = 0

while i < len(str1):
  j = 0
  while j < len(str2):
    if not str1[i+j] == str1[j]:
      break
    if j == (len(str2) -1):
      i += len(str2)
    j+=1  
  i+=1

Comments

6

In python, for loops iterate over iterables, instead of incrementing a counter, so you have a couple choices. Using a skip flag like Artsiom recommended is one way to do it. Another option is to make a generator from your range and manually advance it by discarding an element using next().

iGen = (i for i in range(0, 6))
for i in iGen:
    print i
    if not i % 2:
        iGen.next()

But this isn't quite complete because next() might throw a StopIteration if it reaches the end of the range, so you have to add some logic to detect that and break out of the outer loop if that happens.

In the end, I'd probably go with aw4ully's solution with the while loops.

Comments

3

I read all the above answers and those are actually good.

look at this code:

for i in range(1, 4):
    print("Before change:", i)
    i = 20 # changing i variable
    print("After change:", i) # this line will always print 20

When we execute above code the output is like below,

Before Change: 1
After change: 20
Before Change: 2
After change: 20
Before Change: 3
After change: 20

in python for loop is not trying to increase i value. for loop is just assign values to i which we gave. Using range(4) what we are doing is we give the values to for loop which need assign to the i.

You can use while loop instead of for loop to do same thing what you want,

i = 0
while i < 6:
    print(i)
    j = 0
    while j < 5:
        i += 2 # to increase `i` by 2

This will give,

0
2
4

Thank you !

Comments

0
for a in range(1):

    for b in range(3):
        a = b*2
        print(a)

As per your question, you want to iterate the outer loop with help of the inner loop.

  1. In outer loop, we are iterating the inner loop 1 time.
  2. In the inner loop, we are iterating the 3 digits which are in the multiple of 2, starting from 0.

    Output:
    0
    2
    4
    

Comments

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