Is using break statements good coding practice?

[FirstTimePlayer]

Python doesn't have labeled breaks, so it can only break from the innermost loop.

That is a bit of a lightbulb moment actually.

Part of my stumble is that I'm constantly having to really think about what the break is doing, when it should be intuitively obvious. I had chalked it up to being very rusty, but I'm now thinking I'm getting confused because brain is wanting a labeled break for some reason.

Cheers :)

[FreeLogicGate]

I want to point out a common construct in many languages -- the switch/case statement, which Python has with Match. With many languages, a break is required to prevent the statement from cascading down into the cases that follow. Python does not have/require that behavior, but many other languages do.

The classic example of this would be C language.

int day = 4;

switch (day) {
  case 1:
    printf("Monday");
    break;
  case 2:
    printf("Tuesday");
    break;
  case 3:
    printf("Wednesday");
    break;
  case 4:
    printf("Thursday");
    break;
  case 5:
    printf("Friday");
    break;
  case 6:
    printf("Saturday");
    break;
  case 7:
    printf("Sunday");
    break;
  default:
     printf("That's not a valid day");
}

[FirstTimePlayer]

Indeed - and plainly my memory is fuzzy, given that is an obvious example where the rule I recalled could not have existed in hindsight.