How to continously run a piece of code while simultaneously checking for a condition?

so if you want to leave the loop, when a condition is met, you have to use break.
If the loop does not have any condition to be check at every loop run beginning, the use while True (endless).
endless loops should have any terminating condition check in its body, so the script does not need to be killed by brute force.

#someCondition = None # not needed here
#while someCondition == None:
while True; # starts endless loop
    danceLeft()
    danceRight()
    danceAcrossTheHallway()
    if someRegion.exists(someImg, 1): # check terminating condition
        print("Stopped dancing; the image has appeared!")
        break
# next statement after loop is exited

... and here is faq 1437, that I wrote on loops in Python scripts 6 years ago ;-)

Thanks for your reply and the link. I didn't know about 'break'. Certainly it will be handy in the future, as well as the rest of the FAQ. :) However, this does not entirely answer the question. The problem is that I want the functions to continue running, without having to stop and wait for the image explicitly (using 'exists'). I mean, to eliminate all such pauses. If I put multiple copies of the condition check, between the defined functions, it will have to wait before executing the next function.

while True; # starts endless loop
    danceLeft()
    if someRegion.exists(someImg, 1): # check terminating condition, losing 1 seconds
        print("Stopped dancing; the image has appeared!")
        break
    danceRight()
    if someRegion.exists(someImg, 1): # check terminating condition, losing another 1 second
        print("Stopped dancing; the image has appeared!")
        break
    danceAcrossTheHallway()
    if someRegion.exists(someImg, 1): # check terminating condition, losing yet another 1 second
        print("Stopped dancing; the image has appeared!")
        break

Perhaps this could work, if I make the condition check is short enough, but it doesn't feel optimal.
I was hoping there would be a way of continuously watching for an image in a region, while running / looping some functions in parallel, and stopping / breaking the loop while the condition is met.

Otherwise the condition check will have to be inserted everywhere, or atleast every now and then, in the loop, and the ride won't be smooth.

@Manfred
Good idea, but I guess this will make it for him even more complex.

@Martin
an image check always costs some time.
So the only chance is to minimise this "pause" in the script.

1. step: use
exists(image, 0)

which does only one search. depending on region and image size this may reduce the search time to some 10 millisecs.

2. step: make the search region as small as possible

Excellent, thanks! "It is possible to let the script wait for the completion of an observation or let the observation run in background (meaning in parallel)" sounds exactly like what I was looking for. It is difficult refer to the documentation, unless you know the jargon, but now it makes sense. Thanks alot RaiMan and Manfred. This helped alot. :)

Cheers for the additional feedback, RaiMan. I will try both approaches and see how they work out!

Thanks Manfred Hampl, that solved my question.