On 2013-07-31, Tim Chase <python.l...@tim.thechases.com> wrote: > On 2013-07-31 07:16, Joshua Landau wrote: >> On 30 July 2013 18:52, Grant Edwards wrote: >>> I also find intializers for tables of data to be much more easily >>> read and maintained if the columns can be aligned. >> >> Why do you have tables in your Python code?
For example: if you're writing an assembler, you usually have a table of mnemonics/opcodes/instruction-format/addressing-modes. > I've had occasion to write things like: > > for name, value, description in ( > ("cost", 42, "How much it cost"), > ("status", 3141, "Status code from ISO-3.14159"), > ... > ): > do_something(name, value) > print(description) > > I interpret Grant's statement as wanting the "table" to look like > > for name, value, description in ( > ("cost", 42, "How much it cost"), > ("status", 3141, "Status code from ISO-3.14159"), > ... > ): > do_something(name, value) > print(description) Exactly. When you have more than about 5 columns and 10 rows, having things aligned makes it far, far, easier to maintain. > which does give some modest readability benefits, but at a creation > cost I personally am unwilling to pay. It only gets typed once, it gets read hundreds or thousands of times. Optimize the common case. -- Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! I am NOT a nut.... at gmail.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list