Hi all, one of the very few things that still bugs me with Python is its lack of the "?" operator as present in C and Java. The clarity and conciseness of lines like
answer = is_a ? "It's A!" : "Maybe B?" is just unmatched for me by its Python equivalents. It doesn't actually really help that there are two commonly used alternatives in Python: answer = is_a and "It's A!" or "Maybe B?" or, alternatively since Python 2.5: answer = "It's A!" if is_a else "Maybe B?" Oh come on Guido, you could have done better than that! The first option is usually a surprise to non-Python people, and while I've come to accept and even somewhat like it, the ambiguity of the boolean operators involved always leaves me with the feeling of being a bit non-waterproof, especially with a more complex expressions. The second option is more explicit, but swapping the order and putting the (actually non-default) case before the comparison feels less readable and a bit confusing, too. What do you guys prefer? Did I overlook anything obvious? Has this been discussed thousands of times? Best, Flo P.S. if you want to read up on some of the history of this issue, its http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0308/ -- To post: [email protected] To unsubscribe: [email protected] Feeds: http://groups.google.com/group/python-north-west/feeds More options: http://groups.google.com/group/python-north-west
