"Steve Holden" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Thomas Bartkus wrote: > > > "Carl Banks" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message > > news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > <snip> > > > >>How common is it for a local variable to be bound in > >>more than one place within a function? > > > > > > How common? It shouldn't happen at all and that was the point. > > This seems a little excessive to me. Sample use case: > > for something in lst: > if type(something) != type(()): > something = tuple(something)
Hhhmmh! I presume you are going through the list and want to gaurantee that every item you encounter is a tuple! So if it ain't - you just re-declare "something" to be a tuple. What was formerly a single string, integer, whathaveyou is now a tuple *containing* a single string, integer, whathaveyou. Do you do it that way because you can? Or because you must? And If the former - is it a good idea? OR did I just miss your codes intent completely? My first inclination would be to create a new variable (type = tuple) and accept (or typecast) each "something" into it as required. The notion that you just morph "something" still seems rather abhorrent. It hadn't occurred to me that iterating through a list like that means the iterater "something" might need to constantly morph into a different type according to a lists possibly eclectic contents. It might explain why the interpreter is incapable of enforcing a type. It would forbid iterating through lists containing a mix of different types. EXCEPT- I must note, that other languages manage to pull off exactly such a trick with a variant type. When you need to pull off a feat such as this, you declare a variant type where the rules are relaxed *for that situation only* and there is no need to toss the baby out with the bathwater. Thomas Bartkus -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
