What are some other way to rewrite this if block?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 18 Mar 2013 15:32:03 +0100, Jean-Michel Pichavant wrote:

> You can remove the 'if' line, report_status asks for hours, the caller
> is supposed to provide valid hours. What if the caller gives you
> strings, integer, floats ?  This is a never ending story.

I see you haven't been a programmer very long *wink*

Yes, error checking and data validation is a never ending story. Welcome 
to programming. That's what we do.



> def report_status(should_be_on, came_on):
> 
>     # well if you really really want to test it 
>     assert(all([int(arg) in range(0,24) for arg in
>       (should_be_on, came_on)]))

Please don't use assert for argument checking in public APIs. (And 
probably not in private APIs either.) assert is wrong for two reasons:

1) Invalid arguments should raise TypeError or ValueError. You wouldn't 
arbitrarily raise KeyError("expected 0 < arg < 24 but got arg = -1") or 
IOError("expected an int but got a string"). That would be unprofessional 
and foolish. So why raise AssertionError?

2) assert is not guaranteed to run, and you have *no control over it*. If 
the user calls python with the -O flag, asserts are disabled and your 
error checking is never performed.


assert is designed to verify internal logic of your code, not caller-
facing argument validation.



-- 
Steven