Ben Finney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Paul Rubin <http://[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> You can just use a variable name than you ignore. It's traditional >> to use _ but it's not a special keyword, it's just a another >> variable name: >> >> y, _, d, _, _, _, _, _, _ = time.localtime() > > It's a terrible name for that purpose, since it doesn't indicate the > intention explicitly,
There's a lot of tradition behind _ for this purpose, not just in Python. For example, pattern-matching function languages, like ML and Haskell, have been using _ to mean `don't care' for a long time. Just the fact that the name is repeated suggests that you don't care about its value. Besides, it's a good choice for other reasons: because the symbol is short, the variables you do care about stand out clearly. > Far better to use the name 'unused' as suggested by Carl Banks earlier > today. Other traditional names are `hunoz', `hukairz' and (apparently) `huaskt. But these have much more visual clutter than the humble _. You actually need to do reading to pick out the bindings which you /are/ interested in. -- [mdw] -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
