My mistake. You're talking about the ?? operator, and I'm thinking about the null-aware operators.
You say short-circuiting would be nice to have, but short-circuiting is what people want it for. As for using `if-else`, that's listed as an alternative here: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0505/#ternary-operator The coalesce operator has the semantic advantage ("expressiveness"?): you are saying what you want to do, rather than how you do it. Making a function is one way to get semantic advantage, but you can't do that if you want short-circuiting. The question on the table is whether the semantic advantage is worth the cost of a new operator. That's a value question, so it's not gonna be easy to answer it with objective observations. (Not that I'm suggesting anything, but some languages have custom short-circuiting, via macros or lazy arg evalation. That's be using a missile to hammer in a nail.) On Oct 14, 2016 9:46 AM, "Franklin? Lee" <leewangzhong+pyt...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Oct 14, 2016 9:14 AM, "Gustavo Carneiro" <gjcarne...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > Sorry if I missed the boat, but only just now saw this PEP. > > > > Glancing through the PEP, I don't see mentioned anywhere the SQL alternative of having a coalesce() function: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6/static/functions-conditional.html#FUNCTIONS-COALESCE-NVL-IFNULL > > > > In Python, something like this: > > > > def coalesce(*args): > > for arg in args: > > if arg is not None: > > return arg > > return None > > > > Just drop it into builtins, and voila. No need for lengthy discussions about which operator to use because IMHO it needs no operator. > > > > Sure, it's not as sexy as a fancy new operator, nor as headline grabbing, but it is pretty useful. > > That function is for a different purpose. It selects the first non-null value from a flat collection. The coalesce operators are for traveling down a reference tree, and shortcutting out without an exception if the path ends. > > For example: > return x?.a?.b?.c > instead of: > if x is None: return None > if x.a is None: return None > if x.a.b is None: return None > return x.a.b.c > > You can use try-catch, but you might catch an irrelevant exception. > try: > return x.a.b.c > except AttributeError: > return None > If `x` is an int, `x.a` will throw an AttributeError even though `x` is not None. > > A function for the above case is: > def coalesce(obj, *names): > for name in names: > if obj is None: > return None > obj = getattr(obj, name) > return obj > > return coalesce(x, 'a', 'b', 'c') > > See this section for some examples: > https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0505/#behavior-in-other-languages > > (The PEP might need more simple examples. The Motivating Examples are full chunks of code from real libraries, so they're full of distractions.)
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