title: make a global condition break
body: <p>allow me to preface this by saying that i am learning python on my own as part of my own curiosity, and i was recommended a free online computer science course that is publicly available, so i apologize if i am using terms incorrectly. </p>
  
  <p>i have seen questions regarding this particular problem on here before - but i have a separate question from them and did not want to hijack those threads. the question:</p>
  
  <p>"a substring is any consecutive sequence of characters inside another string. The same substring may occur several times inside the same string: for example "assesses" has the substring "sses" 2 times, and "trans-Panamanian banana" has the substring "an" 6 times. Write a program that takes two lines of input, we call the first needle and the second haystack. Print the number of times that needle occurs as a substring of haystack."</p>
  
  <p>my solution (which works) is: </p>
  
  <pre><code>first = str(input())
  second = str(input())
  
  count = 0
  location = 0
  while location &lt; len(second):
     if location == 0:
        location = str.find(second,first,0)
        if location &lt; 0:
           break
        count = count + 1                          
     location = str.find(second,first,location +1)   
     if location &lt; 0:
        break
     count = count + 1
  print(count)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>if you notice, i have on two separate occasions made the if statement that if location is less than 0, to break. is there some way to make this a 'global' condition so i do not have repetitive code? i imagine efficiency becomes paramount with increasing program sophistication so i am trying to develop good practice now. </p>
  
  <p>how would python gurus optimize this code or am i just being too nitpicky?</p>