question of style

[Dave Angel]

upwestdon wrote:
> On Jul 2, 1:23 pm, Simon Forman <sajmik... at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> Hey I was hoping to get your opinions on a sort of minor stylistic
>> point.
>> These two snippets of code are functionally identical. Which would you
>> use and why?
>> The first one is easier [for me anyway] to read and understand, but
>> slightly less efficient, while the second is [marginally] harder to
>> follow but more efficient.
>>
>> ## First snippet
>>
>> if self.higher is self.lower is None: return
>> if self.lower is None: return self.higher
>> if self.higher is None: return self.lower
>>
>> ## Second snippet
>>
>> if self.higher is None:
>>     if self.lower is None:
>>         return
>>     return self.lower
>> if self.lower is None:
>>     return self.higher
>>
>> What do you think?
>>
>> (One minor point: in the first snippet, the "is None" in the first
>> line is superfluous in the context in which it will be used, the only
>> time "self.lower is self.higher" will be true is when they are both
>> None.)
>>     
>
> How about just:
>
> if not (self.higher and self.lower):
>     return self.higher or self.lower
>
>   
But if self.higher is 0  and self.lower is None, this'll return None, 
which wasn't the original intent.

Without having some documented constraints on the self.higher and lower 
types and values, it's difficult to simplify further.