>>>>> "Sebastian" == Sebastian Bassi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Sebastian> On 9/30/05, Reinhold Birkenfeld <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> after Guido's pronouncement yesterday, in one of the next
>> versions of Python there will be a conditional expression with
>> the following syntax: X if C else Y
Sebastian> I don't understand why there is a new expression, if
Sebastian> this could be accomplished with:
Sebastian> if C: X else: Y
Sebastian> What is the advantage with the new expression?
One very frequent use case is building a string.
Instead of:
if X==0:
filler="yes"
else:
filler="no"
return "the answer is %s" % filler
What I really want to do is take four lines of conditional, and put
them into one, as well as blow off dealing with a 'filler' variable:
return "the answer is " + "yes" if X==0 else "no"
Or whatever the final release syntax is.
Conditional expressions are a nice way to shim something in place, on
an acute basis. Chronic use of them could lead to a full-on plate of
spaghetti, where you really wanted code.
They can be impenitrable. Whenever I'm dealing with them in C/C++, I
always line the ?, the :, and the ; characters vertically, which may
seem a bit excessive in terms of whitespace, but provides a nice
hieroglyph over on the right side of the screen, to make things
obvious.
Best,
Chris
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