Python's simplicity philosophy

[Rainer Deyke]

Douglas Alan wrote:
>    Q: How do I sum a sequence of numbers?

In three lines:

x = 0
for element in seq:
  x += element

In two lines:

>    A: from operator import add
>       reduce(add, seq)

Unless seq is empty, in which case you need this:

from operator import add
reduce(add, seq, 0)

In one line:

x = sum(seq)


And that is why 'sum' is a worthwhile part of the Python standard library
and 'reduce' is not: using 'sum' is significantly shorter than using a for
loop, while using 'reduce' is not.


-- 
Rainer Deyke - rainerd at eldwood.com - http://eldwood.com