Why is `continue` not allowed in a `finally` clause in Python?

The use of continue in a finally-clause is forbidden because its interpretation would have been problematic. What would you do if the finally-clause were being executed because of an exception?

for i in range(10):
    print i
    try:
       raise RuntimeError
    finally:
       continue        # if the loop continues, what would happen to the exception?
    print i

It is possible for us to make a decision about what this code should do, perhaps swallowing the exception; but good language design suggests otherwise. If the code confuses readers or if there is a clearer way to express the intended logic (perhaps with try: ... except Exception: pass; continue), then there is some advantage to leaving this as a SyntaxError.

Interestingly, you can put a return inside a finally-clause and it will swallow all exceptions including KeyboardInterrupt, SystemExit, and MemoryError. That probably isn’t a good idea either 😉