palewire <ben.we...@gmail.com> writes: > In my application, I'd like to have a function that compares two values, > either of which may be null, and then classify the result depending on > whether one is higher or lower than the other.
Didn't we just have a huge thread about that? Using a special null value is often (not always) a code smell. But anyway (untested): def compare(a,b): if a is None and b is None: # I'm guessing you meant this return "No data" if a == b: return "Stayed the same" if a != 0 else "Never had" elif a < b: return "gained" else: # we know here that a > b return "Lost some" if b > 0 else "Lost all" I don't know what you intended to do in the case where exactly one of (a,b) is None, so I'll leave that to you. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list