For Loop for n iterations-Python

Question

I have a simple for loop in a Python script:

for filename in filenames:
    outline = getinfo(filename)
    outfile.write(outline)

This for loop is part of a larger script that extracts data from HTML pages. I have nearly 6GB of HTML pages and want to do some test runs before I try it on all of them.

How can I make the loop break after a set number of iterations (lets say 100)?

This should be a duplicate of stackoverflow.com/questions/2688079 but I ran out of close votes today. — Karl Knechtel
– Karl Knechtel, Commented Jul 30, 2022 at 3:49

kqr · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-11 17:17:18Z

13

for filename in filenames[:100]:
    outline= getinfo(filename)
    outfile.write(outline)

The list slice filenames[:100] will truncate the list of file names to just the first 100 elements.

answered Jun 11, 2013 at 17:17

kqr

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3 Comments

chepner Over a year ago

For a general iterator (not necessarily a list): for filename in itertools.islice(filenames, 100):.

kqr Over a year ago

@chepner Is that necessary also in Python 3?

chepner Over a year ago

Yes; you can't use slice syntax with arbitrary iterators.

waldol1 · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-11 17:16:58Z

9

Keep a counter for your for loop. When your counter reaches, 100, break

counter = 0
for filename in filenames:
    if counter == 100:
        break
    outline= getinfo(filename)
    outfile.write(outline)
    counter += 1

answered Jun 11, 2013 at 17:16

waldol1

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1 Comment

kqr Over a year ago

The preferred way to keep a counter is to do for (counter, filename) in enumerate(filenames).

Jon Clements · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-11 17:25:31Z

2

I like @kqr's answer, but just another approach to consider, instead of taking the first 100, you could take a random n many instead:

from random import sample
for filename in sample(filenames, 10):
    # pass

answered Jun 11, 2013 at 17:25

Jon Clements

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3 Comments

kqr Over a year ago

I would argue this is the better solution as long as it doesn't have any terrible performance issues.

Jon Clements Over a year ago

@kqr the main issue I would be worried about is reproduce-ability.... So maybe the compromise is to take 1 in n instead, which could be done nicely with slicing as shown in your answer... And still be more useful for testing...

kqr Over a year ago

Yes, that's what I thought too, but discarded since it would probably have similar performance to taking a random sample. I didn't think about testability, but you are indeed correct.

Orkun Berk Yuzbasioglu · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-27 21:22:14Z

2

Use the built-in function enumerate(), available in both Python 2 and 3.

for idx,filename in enumerate(filenames):
    if idx == 100:
        break
    outline= getinfo(filename)
    outfile.write(outline)

Also look at this.

answered May 27, 2020 at 21:22

Orkun Berk Yuzbasioglu

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