For review: PEP 308 - If-then-else expression
holger krekel
pyth at devel.trillke.net
Sat Feb 8 10:15:28 EST 2003
Andrew Koenig wrote:
> Erik> That's exactly my view, as well. I would prefer `if p then x
> Erik> else y', but if an extra keyword is absolutely contradindicated,
> Erik> then I'll settle for `x if p else y'. I just want the
> Erik> functionality, I can learn to use the syntax.
>
> I find one aspect of this discussion particularly interesting:
>
> Most of the people in favor of PEP 308 have a pretty good idea of the
> contexts in which they want to use conditional expressions.
>
> Most of the people opposed to PEP 308 are giving purely subjective
> reasons, disliking the whole idea so much that not only do they not
> want to use it, but they want to prevent other people from doing so as
> well.
Let me guess which side you lean on :-)
Actually, in my book people gave quite some good reasons
for opposing the PEP:
a) it reads ugly especially in non-assignment statements
b) it reuses a keyword which formerly was a clean indicator
of a statement
c) you can't read it either LtR or RtL
d) there are often better ways than doing the C-ish
'x ? y : z'
e) adds to the stuff you have to learn if you read others code
f) is not an important enough use case to warrant new syntax
And i probably forgot others.
> I've seen conflicts like this in other contexts; they're often a
> symptom of two subsets of the community that come from different
> backgrounds and want to program in different styles.
I have often seen people claiming that other people's objections
are just based on irrational feelings whereas themselves they
would have well-founded oppinions :-)
More seriously, though, i think you are right about pythoneers
coming from different backgrounds. But it's important to
settle on a *minimal* set of syntax and not combine all the
wishes from all "groups" which would greatly decrease readability
of other's source code.
holger
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