[Python-Dev] PEP 572: Usage of assignment expressions in C

[Raymond Hettinger]

> On Apr 28, 2018, at 8:45 AM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
> 
>> I personally haven't written a lot of C, so have no personal experience,
>> but if this is at all a common approach among experienced C developers, it
>> tells us a lot.
> 
> I think it's a matter of taste and personal habit.  Some people will
> often do it, some less.  Note that C also has a tendency to make it
> more useful, because doesn't have exceptions, so functions need to
> (ab)use return values when they want to indicate an error.  When you're
> calling such functions (for example I/O functions), you routinely have
> to check for special values indicating an error, so it's common to see
> code such as:
> 
>  // Read up to n bytes from file descriptor
>  if ((bytes_read = read(fd, buf, n)) == -1) {
>      // Error occurred while reading, do something
>  }

Thanks Antoine, this is an important point that I hope doesn't get lost.
In a language with exceptions, assignment expressions are less needful.
Also, the pattern of having of having mutating methods return None
further limits the utility.


Raymond