I need newbie help

[Sean Berry]

You have to read the whole page to understand why.

The title is: Python style switches.
Python does not have a swith statement like many other languages.
A switch statement could look like this:

switch (a)
    case 1:    do something
    case 2:    do something else
    case 3:    do something else
    default:    do something else

It evaluates a and checks to see if there is a matching case.  If there
is, it executes the code for that case.  So if a==1, it would "do
something."

Since Python doesn't have a switch statement, you can make your own.
In Python you could do something like this though:

selector={
   x<0    : 'return None',
   0<=x<1 : 'return 1',
   1<=x<2 : 'return 2',
   2<=x<3 : 'return 3',
   3<=x   : 'return None'
   }[a]

if a == 1, it would "return 1".








"john fabiani" <jfabiani at yolo.com> wrote in message
news:F0Yoc.67040$Ub.57241 at newssvr25.news.prodigy.com...
> Sean Berry wrote:
>
> > "Joseph Davidson" <jhd at radix.net> wrote in message
> > news:10a83t8qku40d44 at corp.supernews.com...
> >
> >>I am an experienced perl programmer learning python ( no commente please
> >>).
> >>
> >>In looking at a sample script at
> >>http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/269708
> >>
> >>I found the following code snippet.
> >>--------------------------------------------------
> >>location = 'myHome'
> >>fileLocation = {'myHome'   :path1,
> >>                'myOffice' :path2,
> >>                'somewhere':path3}[location]
> >>
> >>-----------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >
> >
> > fileLocation takes the 'value' of the 'key' "location"
> > equilvalent to:
> >
> > location = 'myHome'
> > files = {'myHome'   :path1, 'myOffice' :path2, 'somewhere':path3}
> > fileLocation = files[location]
> >
> >
> >>It seems that this is setting up fileLocation  as a dictionary, but what
> >>is the "[location]" doing?
> >>
> >>Joe Davidson
> >>
> >>--
> >
> >
> >
> I'm also a newbie.  Did the programmer that wrote the code not use your
> way (3 statements) because his statement was faster or because it better
> python?
>
> John