How to stop an infinite loop in python

Question

This is the function that repeats (call get_next_value to get potential values!) until a valid value (a number in the range 1-26) is produced.Get_next_value is just a function. But it creates an infinite loop, how would i fix it?

while get_next_value(deck) < 27:
     if get_next_value(deck) < 27:
        result = get_next_value(deck)
return result

Answer 1

This is how it should be written:

while True:                        # Loop continuously
    result = get_next_value(deck)  # Get the function's return value
    if result < 27:                # If it is less than 27...
        return result              # ...return the value and exit the function

Not only is the infinite recursion stopped, but this method only runs get_next_value(deck) once per iteration, not three times.

Note that you could also do:

result = get_next_value(deck)      # Get the function's return value
while result >= 27:                # While it is not less than 27...
    result = get_next_value(deck)  # ...get a new one.
return result                      # Return the value and exit the function

These two solutions basically do the same thing, so the choice between them is simply one on style.