Why is this else: pass needed for processing to continue? [closed]

Answer 1

You don't need it. I ran the following 2 scripts:

#test1.py
import os

source_dir = '.'
ext = '.txt'

for dirName, subdirList, fileList in os.walk(source_dir):
    if not any(os.path.splitext(fileName)[1].lower() == ext for fileName in fileList):
        print '  skipping "{}"'.format(dirName)
        continue
    else:  # why is this clause needed to continue this iteration of a loop?
        print 'contains   "{}"'.format(dirName)
        pass

    print 'processing "{}" which has "{}" files'.format(dirName, ext)

and

#test2.py
import os

source_dir = '.'
ext = '.txt'

for dirName, subdirList, fileList in os.walk(source_dir):
    if not any(os.path.splitext(fileName)[1].lower() == ext for fileName in fileList):
        print '  skipping "{}"'.format(dirName)
        continue
    #else:  # why is this clause needed to continue this iteration of a loop?
    #    print 'contains   "{}"'.format(dirName)
    #    pass

    print 'processing "{}" which has "{}" files'.format(dirName, ext)

I ran them as:

python test1.py > junk.log
python test2.py > junk.log2

Here's the first couple lines of junk.log:

test $ head junk.log
processing "." which has ".txt" files
  skipping "./new"
  skipping "./unum"
processing "./unum/kiv-unum-409befe069ac" which has ".txt" files
  skipping "./unum/kiv-unum-409befe069ac/build"
  skipping "./unum/kiv-unum-409befe069ac/build/bdist.macosx-10.3-fat"
  skipping "./unum/kiv-unum-409befe069ac/build/lib"
  skipping "./unum/kiv-unum-409befe069ac/build/lib/tests"
  skipping "./unum/kiv-unum-409befe069ac/build/lib/unum"
  skipping "./unum/kiv-unum-409befe069ac/build/lib/unum/units

Notice the presence of "processing" lines.

Then I diff the output:

diff junk.log junk.log2

with the following results:

0a1
> contains   "."
3a5
> contains   "./unum/kiv-unum-409befe069ac"
14a17
> contains   "./unum/kiv-unum-409befe069ac/docs"
16a20
> contains   "./unum/kiv-unum-409befe069ac/nose-1.2.1-py2.7.egg/EGG-INFO"
19a24
> contains   "./unum/kiv-unum-409befe069ac/nose-1.2.1-py2.7.egg/nose"
30a36
> contains   "./unum/kiv-unum-409befe069ac/Unum.egg-info"

Note that there are no differences on the "processing" lines.