Hi,
my collegues and I recently held a coding style review.
All of the code we produced is used in house on a commerical project.
One of the minor issues I raised was the common idiom of specifing:
<pre>
if len(x) > 0:
do_something()
</pre>
Instead of using the language-defined bahviour, as stated by PEP8:
<pre>
- For sequences, (strings, lists, tuples), use the fact that empty
sequences are false.
Yes: if not seq:
if seq:
No: if len(seq)
if not len(seq)
</pre>
Without wishing to start a flame war, what are other's opinions on
this, is using "len" safer? If so why?
Arguments that have been presented for using <code>len(x) > 0</code> to
test emptiness of a container include:
- It's safer
- Not relying on weird behaviour of the language
- Explicit is better than implicit (as stated by 'this' module, Zen
of Python)
My own feeling is that I am willing to work with the behaviours defined
by Python, and treat the use of len in these cases as excessive
duplication (this is however, quite a minor point i agree).
Note that I have much more experience with the language (6-7 years),
whilst the majority of my collegues have about 1-2 years experience.
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