something like "if" that returns a value?

[holger krekel]

Paul Rudin wrote:
> >>>>> "holger" == holger krekel <pyth at devel.trillke.net> writes:
> 
> 
> 
>  holger>  Is there an obvious killer use case?  IOW can you
>  holger> state a problem where the use of a ternary operator comes in
>  holger> really handy?  Sorry if this sounds dumb to you but i am interested.
> 
> I'm not sure it's that big a deal, but looking back over some of the
> bits and pieces I wrote over the weekend there are a number of code
> fragments that follow this kind of pattern:

let's see.

> def foo(x,y,...):
>     acc=func1(x,y....)
>     if some_test:
>        acc = acc+func2(x,y...)
>     else:
>        acc = acc+func3(x,y...)
>     return acc

if you are doing this often of course you could write a helper...  but 

> Personally I'd  prefer to be able to write something like:
> 
> def foo(x,y,....):
>    return func1(x,y,..) + 
>           if some_test:
>               func2(x,y...) 
>           else:
>               func3(x,y..)

def foo(*args):
    return func1(*args) + (func2,func3)[not some_test](*args)

might do what you want. (*args expresses "all positional arguments")

cheers,

    holger