[Python-ideas] Control Flow - Never Executed Loop Body

[Sven R. Kunze]

On 23.03.2016 23:17, Andrew Barnert wrote:
> You clearly don't understand my precious responses. If you don't see the difference between good syntactic sugar and useless syntactic sugar, then I can't explain to you why Python is better than assembler. :P

Good syntactic sugar is sweet. What means good to you? ;-)

> So you're refusing to provide examples because you're sure that no 
> examples would convince anyone?

No, I didn't say that. I don't need examples mostly because I see them 
each day.

But because you asked, here you are:

class MyClass:
     def mymethod(self):
         try:
             if my_condition:
                 dosomething()
             elif another_condition():
                 makesomething()
                 andanythingelse()
             else:
                 butdontforgetaboutthis()
         except SomeException:
             pass
         finally:
             return None

Would turn into:

class MyClass:
     def mymethod(self):
         if my_condition:
             dosomething()
         elif another_condition():
             makesomething()
             andanythingelse()
         else:
             butdontforgetaboutthis()
         except SomeException:
             pass
         finally:
             return None

1 line saved and 7 lines with 1 indentation level less (maybe even 
related to PEP8 and 80 chars line length).

You might call it useless, I call it good.


Regarding Python syntax, we are constantly going into territory where 
there is nothing much left to improve. The big "good syntactic sugar" is 
already done. However, I don't think we should stop here. 10 smaller 
improvements are as good one big one.

Btw. I don't believe we could improve all Python code out there with 
this change, however when you are in such a situation you really 
appreciate it if you can do it. Especially when the surrounding source 
code already blows your mind; you are grateful for every single 
simplification (less lines, less indentation). I don't know what Python 
code you maintain but this would our lives easier.


Best,
Sven