pythonfor-loopif-statementreturn-value

Why do return and print statements in for-loop don't work together in Python?

Can you please explain why does this function prints -1 only once, when it has to print it on each loop cycle? However, when I remove line 9 return -1, it prints -1 4 times, as it should be. How does it work?

def find_index(to_search, target):
    enum_tuple = tuple(enumerate(to_search))
    # print(enum_tuple)
    for i, value in enum_tuple:
        if value == target:
            break
        else: 
            print(-1)
            return -1
    return i

my_list = ["Rick", "Amy", "Jack", "Mary"]

index_location = find_index(my_list, "Tom")
Solution

  • This happens because when you reach line 9 return -1 you are exiting the function find_index so the loop won't continue running.