[Tutor] How to enable pausing my stop_watch.py ?

[Dick Moores]

Alan Gauld wrote at 14:19 7/9/2004:
> > >   h_seconds = (hours and 3600*int(hours)) or 0  # shorter but more
> > >obscure
> > >
> > >Works like this:
> > >Only evaluate 3600*hours if hours NOT ""
> > >If result is False(ie hours was "") then evaluate
> > >second part of OR - ie 0
> >
> > I'm very glad to know about these uses of "and" and "or", but why is
>your
> > way better? Is fewer lines better? Is it faster? More Pythonesque?
>(I'm
> > not defending my code; I'd just like to know.)
>
>It's not better, just an alternative way of doing it. Indeed as the
>comment says its more obscure and so could be regarded as worse!
>However it is also very slightly faster.
>
>If you are a C (or Perl or Java/Javascript) you might be familiar
>with the tertiary ?: operator, if so the and/or pair will present
>a familiar shortcut and for those programmers the obscurity is
>not a problem. I prefer it simply because it is shorter and doesn't
>clutter up my main program with if/elses that are tangential to
>the main purpose of the program. But tastes differ and I would never
>claim the and/or option was better.
>
>Indeed part of the zen of Python is that explicit is better than
>implicit...

Yes, I vaguely remember the ?: operator from learning some C years ago.

Thanks very much. I'm glad explicit is better than implicit, ATBE or almost..

Dick Moores