Stylistic question regarding no-op code and tests

[Jason Swails]

Hi everyone,

I'd like to get some opinions about some coding constructs that may seem at
first glance to serve no purpose, but does have *some* non-negligible
purpose, and I think I've come to the right place :).

The construct is this:

def my_function(arg1, arg2, filename=None):
    """ Some function. If a file is given, it is processed """
    # Some code that performs my_function
    if filename is not None:
        process_file(filename)
    else:
        pass

My question is, what do you think of the "else: pass" statement?  It is a
complete no-op and is syntactically equivalent to the same code with those
lines removed.  Up until earlier today, I would look at that and cringe (I
still do, a little).

What I recently realized, though, that what this construct allows is for
the coverage testing package (which I have recently started employing for
my project... thanks Ned and others!) to detect whether or not both code
paths are covered in the test suite.

I think my opinion here is that this construct is useful to use when the
two code paths are very different operationally from each other, one is an
unusual path that you are not >100% sure is well-covered in your test
suite, but that your first instinct should be to avoid such code.

What do you think?

Thanks!
Jason

-- 
Jason M. Swails
BioMaPS,
Rutgers University
Postdoctoral Researcher
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