Similar to using ifilter, you could use a generator expression:

>>> (x for x in xrange(10) if x > 5).next()
6

In either case, you probably want to catch StopIteration though, in case no elements satisfy your condition.

Similar to using ifilter, you could use a generator expression:

>>> (x for x in xrange(10) if x > 5).next()
6

In either case, you probably want to catch StopIteration though, in case no elements satisfy your condition.

Technically speaking, I suppose you could do something like this:

>>> foo = None
>>> for foo in (x for x in xrange(10) if x > 5): break
... 
>>> foo
6

It would avoid having to make a try/except block. But that seems kind of obscure and abusive to the syntax.