A variable to return a number once, then 0 afterwards

Changed the code so many times it doesn’t even run now. I don’t know what I’m doing to be frank.

Trying to make a user entered starting point for single use in a generator function and have it return 0 thereafter.

def selfDestruct(max=1):
    throwaway = 255              # enter manually  starting point 
    n = 0
    if n < max:
        n += 1
    elif n >= max:
         throwaway = 0
print(throwaway)
print(throwaway)

>Solution :

I’m not sure what your original code was really trying to do, but "generator function that generates up to a given value, then produces 0 afterwards is pretty easy:

from itertools import repeat

def selfDestruct(max=1):
    yield from range(max)  # Use max + 1 if it should produce max itself
    yield from repeat(0)   # We finished yielding the range, now we yield 0 forever

If you don’t want to use range or itertools.repeat it’s not much harder:

def selfDestruct(max=1):
    n = 0
    while n < max:  # <= max to include max itself
        yield n
        n += 1
    while True:     # Infinite loop yielding 0 forever
        yield 0

You use it with a standard for construct, though you’ll need break or itertools.islice involved to prevent the generator from continuing forever:

lasti = None
for i in selfDestruct(10):
    print(i)
    if lasti == i:
        break  # See the same number twice in a row (the trailing zeroes) and we stop
    lasti = i