On Feb 7, 11:01 am, "Denis Bilenko" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Steve Holden wrote: > > These versions differ with respect to treatment of blank lines, which > > indicates how easy it is to go astray in this kind of semantic > > optimization. Your example simply wouldn't work (though you could patch > > it up using "if line is None". (despite the use of short-circuiting > > predicates). > > > both examples show reduction by 3 lines. > > > Perhaps so, but you have to realise that Python has never valued code > > compactness over clarity. > > I'm not sure that your democratic wish to ensure fairness to sequences > > will garner much support, interesting though it is in an academic sense. > > Thank you for the patch. My incentives are not academic though. > > I convinced that this > > line = self._buffer.get(self._bufindex) > if line is None: > self._bufindex += 1 > self._lineno += 1 > self._filelineno += 1 > return line > line = self.readline() > > is more clear than > > try: > line = self._buffer[self._bufindex] > except IndexError: > pass > else: > self._bufindex += 1 > self._lineno += 1 > self._filelineno += 1 > return line > line = self.readline() > > I mentioned 3 lines reduction just because it is > objective, while 'more clear' is subjective. > > Code snippets are again not equivalent, e.g. in the > case when self._buffer[self._bufindex] exists and is > equal to None. Although the author could probably > make a guarantee that is never the case.
This has been a pet peeve of mine too. So you are not completely crazy: http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/269484 There is a discussion about precisely this by Alex Martelli in the printed version of the Python cookbook (2nd edition). I don't share the opinion but I am not going to fight the core Python developers over it. I don't think it is worth the effort. Python is so smooth already, there has to be some excuse to add some cute hack to your program once in a while :-). dict(enumerate(lst)).get(i,default) for example although not very efficient, looks cute. I think I like it better than my own solution. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
