Why won't the function break out of this loop?

Question

I'm not sure why, but the function that I'm using for another program won't break out of the "while" loop when it gets to the FileNotFoundError exception.

import os
def delete_file(file_to_delete):
    try:
        os.remove(file_to_delete)
        print('file removed: ', file_to_delete)
        result = True
    except FileNotFoundError:
        print("Error. File not found.")
        result = False
        while result == False:
            if result == True: break
            input("Please enter a valid filename: ")
        os.remove(file_to_delete)
    return result

Answer 1

Instead, remove the while loop and change your logic for it to work -

import os
def delete_file(file_to_delete):
    result = False
    while result == False:
        try:
            os.remove(file_to_delete)
            print('file removed: ', file_to_delete)
            result = True

        except FileNotFoundError:
            print("Error. File not found.")
            file_to_delete = input('Please enter valid filename: ')
            
    return result

Answer 2

result = False
while result == False:
    if result == True: break
    input("Please enter a valid filename: ")

The loop doesn't contain anything that would change the value of result , so yes, this loop will run forever.

Also, the call to input() is useless because you're not saving the result anywhere.

Answer 3

What you think about that logic?

import os

def delete_file(file_to_delete):
    while not os.path.isfile(file_to_delete):
        print("Error. File not found.")
        file_to_delete = input("Please enter a valid filename: ")
    
    os.remove(file_to_delete)
    print('file removed: ', file_to_delete)
    return True