I am new to python. I have a few questions coming from an armature!

MRAB python at mrabarnett.plus.com
Wed Aug 17 11:54:18 EDT 2016


On 2016-08-17 12:24, Jussi Piitulainen wrote:
> BartC writes:
>
>> On 17/08/2016 07:39, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>>> Rather than ask why Python uses `trueval if cond else falseval`, you
>>> should ask why C uses `cond ? trueval : falseval`. Is that documented
>>> anywhere?
>>
>> I'm not fond of C's a ? b : c but the principle is sound. I generally
>
> [- -]
>
>> Anyway a?b:c was existing practice. At least the order of a,b,c could
>> have been retained if not the exact syntax.
>
> The original was (c1 -> e1, c2 -> e2, ..., cn -> en) in John McCarthy's
> 1960 paper on symbolic expressions, with an actual arrow glyph in place
> of hyphen-greater-than.
>
[snip]

BCPL, the ancestor of  C, had:

     a -> b, c




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