Cleaning up conditionals

[Jussi Piitulainen]

Deborah Swanson writes:

> Is it possible to use some version of the "a = expression1 if
> condition else expression2" syntax with an elif? And for expression1
> and expression2 to be single statements?  That's the kind of
> shortcutting I'd like to do, and it seems like python might be able to
> do something like this.

I missed this question when I read the thread earlier. The answer is
simply to make expression2 be another conditional expression. I tend to
write the whole chain in parentheses. This allows multi-line layouts
like the following alternatives:

a = ( first if len(first) > 0
      else second if len(second) > 0
      else make_stuff_up() )

a = ( first if len(first) > 0 else
      second if len(second) > 0 else
      make_stuff_up() )

Expression1 and expression2 cannot be statements. Python makes a formal
distinction between statements that have an effect and expressions that
have a value. All components of a conditional expression must be
expressions. A function call can behave either way but I think it good
style that the calls in expresions return values.