Question

I can’t see why this won’t work. I am performing lstrip() on the string being passed to the function, and trying to see if it starts with “””. For some reason, it gets caught in an infinite loop

def find_comment(infile, line):

    line_t = line.lstrip()
    if not line_t.startswith('"""') and not line_t.startswith('#'):
        print (line, end = '')
        return line

    elif line.lstrip().startswith('"""'):
            while True:
                if line.rstrip().endswith('"""'):
                    line = infile.readline()
                    find_comment(infile, line)
                else:
                    line = infile.readline()
    else:
        line = infile.readline()
        find_comment(infile, line)

And my output:

Enter the file name: test.txt
import re
def count_loc(infile):

Here is the top of the file i am reading in for reference:

    import re

    def count_loc(infile):
        """ Receives a file and then returns the amount
            of actual lines of code by not counting commented
            or blank lines """

        loc = 0
        func_records = {}
        for line in infile:
        (...)

Answer 1

You haven’t provided and exit path from the recursive loop. A return statement should do the trick.

    (...)
    while True:
        if line.rstrip().endswith('"""'):
            line = infile.readline()
            return find_comment(infile, line)
        else:
            line = infile.readline()