On Sun, 5 Mar 2017 at 11:27 Paul Moore <p.f.mo...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 3 March 2017 at 18:29, Ed Kellett <edk...@gmail.com> wrote: > > - Which of the existing things (slice + [default], conditional on a slice, > > conditional on a len() call) do you think is the obvious way to do it? > > Write a small wrapper function that implements the functionality > (however you want, but it doesn't have to be a single expression, so > you've much more flexibility to make it readable) and then use that. >
It's hardly a question of readability at that point. A reader is at the very least going to have to look at the signature of the utility function in order to be sure about argument order. > - Are there any examples where list.get would be applicable and not the > > obviously best way to do it? > > I don't understand the question. If you're asking which is better > between list.get and a custom written function as described above, > No. I'm asking: if list.get did exist, are there any cases (compatibility with old versions aside) where list.get's semantics would be applicable, but one of the alternatives would be the better choice? "writing a helper function" is a generally > useful idiom that works for many, many things, but list.get only > solves a single problem and every other such problem would need its > own separate language change. Custom helper functions can obviously accomplish anything in any language. If we had to choose between def: and list.get, I'd obviously opt for the former. The disadvantage that you have to write > the helper is trivial, because it's only a few lines of simple code: > I don't think the size of a helper function is relevant to how much of a disadvantage it is. Most built-in list methods are trivial to implement in Python, but I'm glad not to have to. Ed
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