The easiest way I found to 'get' what the for/else did, and more importantly, when to use it, was to concentrate on where the break statement jumps to. The For/else construct is a single block. The break jumps out of the block, and so jumps 'over' the else clause. If the contents of the else clause simply followed the for clause, it would never be jumped over, and so the equivalent logic would have to be provided by putting it in an if. This has been said before, but not quite in these words, so it may help somebody else. Try running the following code fragment. I'm wholeheartedly in favour of the 'no break' comment for clarity.

for a in range(3):
    print(a)
    if a==4: # change value to force break or not
        break
else: #no break  +10 for whoever thought of this decoration
    print('for completed OK')

print('statement after for loop')

编辑-我注意到这个问题仍然在运行

第二个更好的想法……

“没有休息”的评论是负面的。要理解一个正的断言要容易得多，那就是for可迭代对象已经用完了。

for a in range(3):
    print(a)
    if a==4: # change value to force break or not
        print('ending for loop with a break')
        break
else: # for iterable exhausted  
    print('ending for loop as iterable exhausted')

print('for loop ended one way or another')

这也强化了这种解释

if iterable_supplies_a_value:
    run_the_for_with_that_value
else:
    do_something_else

else语句块中的代码将在for循环未被打破时执行。

for x in xrange(1,5):
    if x == 5:
        print 'find 5'
        break
else:
    print 'can not find 5!'
#can not find 5!

来自文档:break和continue语句，以及循环中的else子句

Loop statements may have an else clause; it is executed when the loop terminates through exhaustion of the list (with for) or when the condition becomes false (with while), but not when the loop is terminated by a break statement. This is exemplified by the following loop, which searches for prime numbers: >>> for n in range(2, 10): ... for x in range(2, n): ... if n % x == 0: ... print(n, 'equals', x, '*', n//x) ... break ... else: ... # loop fell through without finding a factor ... print(n, 'is a prime number') ... 2 is a prime number 3 is a prime number 4 equals 2 * 2 5 is a prime number 6 equals 2 * 3 7 is a prime number 8 equals 2 * 4 9 equals 3 * 3 (Yes, this is the correct code. Look closely: the else clause belongs to the for loop, not the if statement.) When used with a loop, the else clause has more in common with the else clause of a try statement than it does that of if statements: a try statement’s else clause runs when no exception occurs, and a loop’s else clause runs when no break occurs. For more on the try statement and exceptions, see Handling Exceptions. The continue statement, also borrowed from C, continues with the next iteration of the loop: >>> for num in range(2, 10): ... if num % 2 == 0: ... print("Found an even number", num) ... continue ... print("Found a number", num) Found an even number 2 Found a number 3 Found an even number 4 Found a number 5 Found an even number 6 Found a number 7 Found an even number 8 Found a number 9

这里的else关键字可能会让人困惑，正如许多人指出的那样，像nobreak, notbreak这样的关键字更合适。

为了理解……其他的……从逻辑上讲，将它与try进行比较……Else，不是if…Else…，大多数python程序员都熟悉以下代码:

try:
    do_something()
except:
    print("Error happened.") # The try block threw an exception
else:
    print("Everything is find.") # The try block does things just find.

类似地，可以将break视为一种特殊的异常:

for x in iterable:
    do_something(x)
except break:
    pass # Implied by Python's loop semantics
else:
    print('no break encountered')  # No break statement was encountered

不同之处在于python暗示除了break，你不能把它写出来，所以它变成:

for x in iterable:
    do_something(x)
else:
    print('no break encountered')  # No break statement was encountered

是的，我知道这种比较可能会很困难和令人厌倦，但它确实澄清了困惑。

即使对经验丰富的Python程序员来说，这也是一个奇怪的结构。当与for-loops结合使用时，它的基本意思是“在可迭代对象中找到某个项，否则如果没有找到则do…”。如:

found_obj = None
for obj in objects:
    if obj.key == search_key:
        found_obj = obj
        break
else:
    print('No object found.')

但是无论何时你看到这个结构，一个更好的选择是将搜索封装在一个函数中:

def find_obj(search_key):
    for obj in objects:
        if obj.key == search_key:
            return obj

或者使用列表推导式:

matching_objs = [o for o in objects if o.key == search_key]
if matching_objs:
    print('Found {}'.format(matching_objs[0]))
else:
    print('No object found.')

它在语义上并不等同于其他两个版本，但在非性能关键代码中工作得足够好，在这些代码中，是否迭代整个列表并不重要。其他人可能不同意，但我个人会避免在生产代码中使用for-else或while-else块。

另参见[Python-ideas] for…其他线程

我把它读成这样:“当可迭代对象完全耗尽时，在完成for语句后，执行即将继续执行下一个语句，else子句将被执行。”因此，当迭代被break打断时，这将不会执行。

Raymond Hettinger做了一个非常棒的演讲，题为“将代码转换成美丽的、地道的Python”，在演讲中他简要地介绍了for Python的历史。其他结构。相关部分是“在循环中区分多个出口点”，从15:50开始，持续约3分钟。以下是要点:

for…else构造是由Donald Knuth设计的，作为某些GOTO用例的替代; 重用else关键字是有意义的，因为“它是Knuth使用的，人们知道，在那个时候，所有的(for语句)都在下面嵌入了一个if和GOTO，他们期望else;” 事后看来，它应该被称为“nobreak”(或者可能是“nobreak”)，这样就不会让人困惑了

所以，如果问题是“为什么他们不改变这个关键字?”，那么Cat Plus Plus可能会给出最准确的答案——在这一点上，它对现有代码的破坏性太大了，不太实用。但如果你真正想问的问题是为什么其他东西一开始就被重用，嗯，显然这在当时看起来是个好主意。

就我个人而言，我喜欢折衷的注释# no break in-line，因为else可能会被误认为属于循环内部。它相当清晰简洁。Bjorn在他的回答结尾链接的摘要中简要提到了这个选项:

为了完整起见，我应该提一下 语法，想要这个语法的程序员现在就可以拥有它: 项目顺序如下: 过程(项目) Else: #不休息 套件

*视频中那部分的额外引用:“就像我们调用lambda makefunction一样，没有人会问，‘lambda是做什么的?’”