[Baypiggies] padding variable assignments, why is it bad?
Wai Yip Tung
tungwaiyip at yahoo.com
Fri Aug 10 21:01:12 CEST 2012
Imagine your have some code like this
row.name = encode(src.get('name'), 'xmlref')
row.description = encode(src.get('description'), 'xmlref')
row.enabled = encode(src.get('enabled'), 'xmlref')
row.last_access = encode(src.get('last_access'), 'xmlref')
This looks a mumbo jumbo lines of code.
However by aligning them into columns, the pattern become immediately
obvious.
row.name = encode(src.get('name'), 'xmlref')
row.description = encode(src.get('description'), 'xmlref')
row.enabled = encode(src.get('enabled'), 'xmlref')
row.last_access = encode(src.get('last_access'), 'xmlref')
It is clear that the code is applying similar operation on 4 items. It
is a lot easier to tell which of the 4 elements and if you should
include more or less into the list. It is a huge visualization
improvement. PEP-8's suggestion on this is not a good one in my opinion.
The down side is it takes some effort to keep it neat and tidy. Of
course I have editor macro that does that. I think every decent text
editor should have some function to help people to align things.
Wai Yip
> Aleksandr Miroslav <mailto:alexmiroslav at gmail.com>
> Friday, August 10, 2012 10:19 AM
> (Reading this email requires a monospaced font.)
>
> I do this a lot in my code:
>
> foo = 1
> foo_bar = 2
> foo_bar_quux = 3
>
> but pep8, which I started using recently, considers this wrong, so I
> have to rewrite to the more common form:
>
> foo = 1
> foo_bar = 2
> foo_bar_quux = 3
>
> which I think sacrifices readability. Perhaps this is the n00b in me
> talking, but why is this considered bad?
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