On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 11:23 PM Christopher Reimer < christopher_rei...@icloud.com> wrote:
> On 4/19/2016 1:02 AM, Michael Selik wrote: > > > Why relocate rather than remove? What message would you provide that's > > better than ``KeyError: 42`` with a traceback that shows exactly which > > dictionary is being used and how? > > I think you misread my code. No dictionary exception occurs in the > sanity checks. Below is the full function with the revised sanity check > for positions that compares the input list with the two valid lists of > board positions. > Perhaps I did misread it. What is the purpose of the "sanity check"? If it's not obvious I suggest revising the code rather than adding comments. The first time I read your code, I thought the check was designed to avoid the possibility of a KeyError a few lines later. My suggestion was to simply allow bad inputs to cause KeyErrors and not clutter your code. This second time I'm reading, it seems to be a sort of boundary check, but using ``in`` which would cause a bug... Did you mean to use an inequality? > > I meant, what goes wrong if the number of positions input is other than > > 16? Without these "sanity" checks, your functions might be reusable in, > > say, a checkers game. > > I have no desire to write reusable code for two > similar but different games at the same time. > Reusability is a nice side-effect of fewer "sanity checks". Other goals are clarity, efficiency, and productivity. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
