[Python-ideas] Proposal: A Reduce-Map Comprehension and a "last" builtin

Rhodri James rhodri at kynesim.co.uk
Mon Apr 9 06:52:45 EDT 2018


On 07/04/18 09:54, Cammil Taank wrote:
>> Care to repeat those arguments?
> 
> Indeed.
> 
> *Minimal use of characters*

Terseness is not necessarily a virtue.  While it's good not to be 
needlessly verbose, Python is not Perl and we are not trying to do 
everything on one line.  Overly terse code is much less readable, as all 
the obfustication competitions demonstrate.  I'm afraid I count this one 
*against* your proposal.

> *Thoughts on odd usage of "!"*
> 
> In the English language, `!` signifies an exclamation, and I am
> imagining a similar usage to that of introducing something by its name
> in an energetic way. For example a boxer walking in to the ring:
> 
> "Muhammed_Ali! <in walks Muhammed Ali>", "x! get_x()"

I'm afraid that's a very personal interpretation.  In particular, '!' 
normally ends a sentence very firmly, so expecting the expression to 
carry on is a little counter-intuitive.  For me, my expectations of '!' 
run roughly as:

   * factorial (from my maths degree)
   * array dereference (because I am old: a!2 was the equivalent of a[2] 
in BCPL)
   * an exclamation, much overused in writing
   * the author was bitten by Yahoo! at an early age.

-- 
Rhodri James *-* Kynesim Ltd


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