newbie question: if var1 == var2:

[John Machin]

On Dec 12, 1:11 pm, MRAB <goo... at mrabarnett.plus.com> wrote:
> John Machin wrote:
> > On Dec 12, 11:39 am, MRAB <goo... at mrabarnett.plus.com> wrote:
> >> Jason Scheirer wrote:
> >>> On Dec 11, 3:49 pm, John Machin <sjmac... at lexicon.net> wrote:
> >>>> On Dec 12, 10:31 am, "Rhodri James" <rho... at wildebst.demon.co.uk>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>> On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 19:49:23 -0000, Steve Holden <st... at holdenweb.com>  
> >>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>> Kirk Strauser wrote:
> >>>>>>> At 2008-11-29T04:02:11Z, Mel <mwil... at the-wire.com> writes:
> >>>>>>>> You could try
> >>>>>>>> for item in fname:
> >>>>>>>>     item = item.strip()
> >>>>>>> This is one case where I really miss Perl's "chomp" function.  It  
> >>>>>>> removes a
> >>>>>>> trailing newline and nothing else, so you don't have to worry about  
> >>>>>>> losing
> >>>>>>> leading or trailing spaces if those are important to you.
> >>>>>> ... and it's so hard to write
> >>>>>>      item = item[:-1]
> >>>>> Tsk.  That would be "chop".  "chomp" would be
> >>>>>      if item[-1] == '\n':
> >>>>>          item = item[:-1]
> >>>> Better:
> >>>> if item and item[-1] == '\n':
> >>>>     return item[:-1]
> >>>> return item
> >>> Best:
> >>> return item \
> >>>        if not (item and item.endswith('\n')) \
> >>>        else item[:-1]
> >>> Though really you should be using item.rstrip()
> >> Why not just:
>
> >>      item[:-1] if item.endswith('\n') else item
>
> > Some possible reasons:
> > * because you might be supporting old versions of Python (my offering
> > runs on 1.5)
> > * because the "<true_value> if <condition> else <false_value>" syntax
> > gives you the screaming dry Edgar Britts
> > * because you'd prefer not to have the overhead of a method lookup and
> > method call
>
> OK:
>
>      if item[-1:] == '\n':
>          return item[:-1]
>      return item

I'll pay that :-)