Style question for conditional execution

[Gerald Britton]

Writing in Python gives me the luxury of choosing different paradigms
for similar operations.  Lately I've been thinking about a minor
detail that peaked my interest and am curious what others think:

Say that I have some function "f" that I will execute if some variable
"v" evaluates true.  Using a classical procedural approach, I might
write:

    if v:
        f()

I might, however, think more in a functional-programming direction.
Then I might write:

    v and f()

Interestingly, this second expression compiles smaller (though only by
a little) in both Python 2.6 and 3.1, which I currently have
installed.  If I had thousands of such expressions, I could boast
about a measurable difference but practically speaking, it is not
significant.

What I _am_ interested in, however, is feedback from a style perspective.

What do the rest of you think about this?

Have you used the second approach and, if so, what was your motivation?

Is there a good/bad reason to choose one over the other?

-- 
Gerald Britton