Sure.. but you also gave an example of an alternative that was complex,Steven Bethard wrote:
So, one of my really common use cases that takes advantage of the fact that default parameters are evaluated at function definition time:
def foo(bar, baz, matcher=re.compile(r'...')): ... text = matcher.sub(r'...', text) ...
Interesting. I would have thought that my example was pretty simple. Maybe it would be helpful to generalize it to:
def foo(bar, baz, spam=badger(x, y, z)):
...All it does is use a default value that was produced by a function call. I'm surprised you haven't run into this situation before...
Of course, what is complex or simple is a matter of personal opinion. I use this pattern so often that it's quite simple to me, but I guess I can understand that if you don't use such a pattern, it might seem foreign to you.
Steve -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
