for -- else: what was the motivation?

[Avi Gross]

Since many languages allow placing multiple statements on one line or
spreading one over many lines, it seems that the number of lines in code
can be adjusted.

If I have a line like:

 Alpha, beta, gamma, delta = 1, 2, 3, 4

Could that be rewritten as 4 or more lines?

I have seen programmers who have taken an elegant pipeline I have built
apart and made it into many lines of code reassignment the value of each
step to the same or different variables and other ways of lengthening or
obscuring my intent.

So although size may matter, so can sighs.

On Sun, Oct 9, 2022, 4:24 AM Peter J. Holzer <hjp-python at hjp.at> wrote:

> On 2022-10-09 05:37:59 +0100, Axy via Python-list wrote:
> > Actually the reason I never used "else" was the violation of the rule
> > of beauty "shortest block first".
>
> That's a weird rule.
>
> I can see justifications for "most common case first" and "most special
> case first", but ordering the cases in an if/elif/else statement by
> length seems like ordering books by color: It may be pretty, but it
> doesn't make them easy to find.
>
>         hp
>
> --
>    _  | Peter J. Holzer    | Story must make more sense than reality.
> |_|_) |                    |
> | |   | hjp at hjp.at         |    -- Charles Stross, "Creative writing
> __/   | http://www.hjp.at/ |       challenge!"
> --
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>