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Nick Craig-Wood
nick at craig-wood.com
Fri Oct 8 09:29:59 EDT 2004
Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Nick Craig-Wood <nick at craig-wood.com> wrote:
[snip good advice re backwards compatibility]
> > Its also half the speed and 4 times the typing
[snip]
> > But who's counting ;-)
>
> Nobody, I sure hope. 's=[]' is just four characters, while 'sentinel =
> []', the usage you suggested (with proper spacing and a decent name), is
> 13, and yet it's pretty obvious the clarity of the latter is well worth
> the triple typing; and if going to 'sentinel = object()' makes it
> clearer yet, the lesser move from 13 to 19 (an extra-typing factor of
> less than 1.5) is similarly well justified.
> And I think it's unlikely you'll need so many sentinels as to notice the
> extra 300 nanoseconds or so to instantiate each of them...
My toungue was firmly in cheek as I wrote that as I hope the smiley
above indicated! I timed the two usages just to see (and because
timeit makes it so easy). Indeed what is 6 characters and 300 nS
between friends ;-)
I shall put the object() as sentinel trick in my toolbag where it
belongs!
--
Nick Craig-Wood <nick at craig-wood.com> -- http://www.craig-wood.com/nick
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