It seems like ''break'' here is not functioning

Question

Here is the code:

for i in range(12):
  for j in range(8):
    if i == j:
        break

print i
print j

My thought is: at first i is equal to 0 and j is equal to 0. This matches with the

i == j

condition and so

break

would be triggered. It would then exit the innermost for loop. So the value of j would be 0. Since the outer for loop doesn't get exited, i would continue to loop through all the elements in range(12) and at the end i would be assigned 11. So when I printed the values of i and j, they would be 11 an d 0 respectively.

However the result was:

i = 11 and j == 7

I would like to know which part in my argument above goes wrong.

You seem to think that your inner loop never executes again after it breaked once, but on the second run of your outer loop, the inner loop starts over. — tkausl, Sep 02 '18 at 12:55
your outer loop continues till the end `i = 11` and inner loop also continues till the end as `j < 8` and hence you get the final iteration of the loop, `i = 11, j = 7` — jkhadka, Sep 02 '18 at 12:58

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 02 '18 at 13:00

with your code, the output is as below. So it the result is completely as expected and break is functioning well.
When ever i == j is true, the inner loop exists but the outer loop is still running and again loops the inner loop till either i==j is met or inner loop is completely iterated. Thus final output is i = 11 ; j = 7, the final result.

print 'i','j'
for i in range(12):
    for j in range(8):
        print i, j
        if i == j:
            #print " yes "
            break
    print "---------"

print i
print j

output is :

i j
0 0
---------
1 0
1 1
---------
2 0
2 1
2 2
---------
3 0
3 1
3 2
3 3
---------
4 0
4 1
4 2
4 3
4 4
---------
5 0
5 1
5 2
5 3
5 4
5 5
---------
6 0
6 1
6 2
6 3
6 4
6 5
6 6
---------
7 0
7 1
7 2
7 3
7 4
7 5
7 6
7 7
---------
8 0
8 1
8 2
8 3
8 4
8 5
8 6
8 7
---------
9 0
9 1
9 2
9 3
9 4
9 5
9 6
9 7
---------
10 0
10 1
10 2
10 3
10 4
10 5
10 6
10 7
---------
11 0
11 1
11 2
11 3
11 4
11 5
11 6
11 7
---------
11
7

It seems like ''break'' here is not functioning

1 Answers1