For review: PEP 308 - If-then-else expression

[Carlos Ribeiro]

On Saturday 08 February 2003 20:15, Paul Moore wrote:
> Oddly, the only argument I find even remotely compelling is the lines
> of code one (which most people would say is the weakest). Less lines
> of code means more code visible at one time, which means you have a
> better overall view of the control flow of a function. But I've never
> seen Python code with functions long enough for that to matter in
> practice.

Code for business-related stuff tend to be much longer than 'pure' programming 
(I hope you'll understand what I mean). Stuff such as data validation, 
filtering and reporting tend to generate very long blocks of code; in some 
cases, the amount of small choices that you have to handle is enough to make 
the function grow to the point where the structure becomes confusing.

> Maybe it all boils down to how finely you decompose things. The more
> you do, the less benefit there is to a conditional expression.

Decomposing things is fine in many cases, but for stuff that is rarely reused, 
such as filtering conditions, it just makes things worse.


Carlos Ribeiro
cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br