Boolean tests [was Re: Attack a sacred Python Cow]
Maric Michaud
maric at aristote.info
Wed Jul 30 10:50:00 EDT 2008
Le Wednesday 30 July 2008 15:31:28 giltay at gmail.com, vous avez écrit :
> > > class Signal:
> > > [...]
> > > def dc_offset(self, amount):
> > > if amount == 0:
> > > return
> > > self.samples = [sample + amount for sample in self.samples]
> >
> > This function is also wrong assuming that because amount compare to zero,
> > it can be added to sample.
>
> Not quite. I'm assuming that if amount equals 0, then amount is some
> scalar. In fact, only if that comparison fails will I get my
> exception: since [] != 0, it will then try to add sample + [], which
> will raise TypeError.
>
> > If you want to make type checking just check the type or convert your
> > parameter to an int, but the test "== 0" is of no help here.
>
> I'm not going for type checking here because I want Signal to support
> int and float samples (and numpy.int16, &c.).
Ok, but the fact that amount == 0 passes, doesn't ensure you didn't a
programming error, this add just some relative robustness (protect you from
passing an empty list). And a reader would probably not see your intention
here (he already expect a scalar due to the name of the variable).
This is exactly the problem ABC is intended to solve.
Without ABC, to explicitly ensure amount is a scalar, just doing a int(amount)
or int(abs(amount)) if you want to deal with complex numbers too, at the
begining of the function is a common idiom.
--
_____________
Maric Michaud
More information about the Python-list
mailing list