What does "Sparse is better than dense" mean? (Python Zen)

Mark McEahern marklists at mceahern.com
Thu Jul 11 09:07:21 EDT 2002


> Although it's in the Humor section I take the Python Zen
> (http://www.python.org/doc/Humor.html#zen) quite seriously.
> However I can understand what does “Sparse is better than
> dense” means.

Here's one of my pet peeves:

	if x: do_one_thing()

or:

	try: foo()
	except: pass

The problem with collapsing these single statement blocks into one line is
that it complicates visual scans of a block of code.  It certainly doesn't
make a hill of beans difference to the compiler.

;-)

// m

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