👀 Views: 439 💬 Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-08-30

python loops debugging Python

Can someone help me understand I'm updating my dependencies and I'm working with an unexpected behavior with a while loop in Python 3.11. I have a loop intended to process items in a list until a certain condition is met, at which point it should exit using a `break` statement. However, the loop seems to terminate prematurely, and I'm not sure why. Here's a simplified version of my code: ```python items = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] processed_items = [] index = 0 while index < len(items): if items[index] == 3: break # I want to stop processing when I reach 3 processed_items.append(items[index]) index += 1 print(processed_items) ``` When I run this code, I expect `processed_items` to contain `[1, 2]`, but instead, it prints `[]`. After some debugging, I realized that the loop is terminating before it can process the first two items. I tried adding print statements to track the index and the item being processed, and I can confirm that the loop enters the condition correctly but still skips the append operation. I also verified that `items` is not being modified elsewhere in the code. To troubleshoot, I tested the condition in a different loop structure, but the results were consistent. Is there something I'm missing with the while loop or break statement in this context? Any insights would be greatly appreciated! I'm coming from a different tech stack and learning Python. Could someone point me to the right documentation? Thanks, I really appreciate it!