Avoiding local variable declarations?

[Gary Herron]

dpapathanasiou wrote:
> I have some old Common Lisp functions I'd like to rewrite in Python
> (I'm still new to Python), and one thing I miss is not having to
> declare local variables.
>
> For example, I have this Lisp function:
>
> (defun random-char ()
>   "Generate a random char from one of [0-9][a-z][A-Z]"
>   (if (< 50 (random 100))
>       (code-char (+ (random 10) 48)) ; ascii 48 = 0
>       (code-char (+ (random 26) (if (< 50 (random 100)) 65 97))))) ;
> ascii 65 = A, 97 = a
>
> My Python version looks like this:
>
> def random_char ():
>     '''Generate a random char from one of [0-9][a-z][A-Z]'''
>     if random.randrange(0, 100) > 50:
>         return chr( random.randrange(0, 10) + 48 ) # ascii 48 = 0
>     else:
>         offset = 65 # ascii 65 = A
>         if random.randrange(0, 100) > 50:
>             offset = 97 # ascii 97 = a
>         return chr( random.randrange(0, 26) + offset )
>
> Logically, it's equivalent of the Lisp version.
>
> But is there any way to avoid using the local variable (offset) in the
> Python version?
>   

Yes, you can avoid using offset, but *why*.  This certainly won't make
your code cleaner or more easily read/understood/maintainable.

    return chr( random.randrange(0, 26) + (97 if random.randrange(0,
100) > 50 else 65)

or

  if random.randrange(0, 100) > 50:
      return chr( random.randrange(0, 26) + 97)
  else:
      return chr( random.randrange(0, 26) + 65)

or

    return chr( random.randrange(0, 26) + [26,97][random.randrange(0,
100) > 50]

or

   ...  probably other ways can be found  ...

but what's wrong with you original code?


Gary Herron




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