"For" loop first iteration

python algorithm iteration
Rince picture Rince · Dec 18, 2009 · Viewed 78.4k times · Source

I would like to inquire if there is an elegant pythonic way of executing some function on the first loop iteration. The only possibility I can think of is:

first = True
for member in something.get():
    if first:
        root.copy(member)
        first = False
    else:
        somewhereElse.copy(member)
    foo(member)

Answer

Daniel Bruce picture Daniel Bruce · Dec 18, 2009

Something like this should work.

for i, member in enumerate(something.get()):
    if i == 0:
         # Do thing
    # Code for everything

However, I would strongly recommend thinking about your code to see if you really have to do it this way, because it's sort of "dirty". Better would be to fetch the element that needs special handling up front, then do regular handling for all the others in the loop.

The only reason I could see for not doing it this way is for a big list you'd be getting from a generator expression (which you wouldn't want to fetch up front because it wouldn't fit in memory), or similar situations.

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