My apologies if any attributions are messed up. On Feb 3, 1:28 am, Steven D'Aprano <[EMAIL PROTECTED] cybersource.com.au> wrote: > On Sun, 03 Feb 2008 15:08:34 +1100, Ben Finney wrote: > >> But I like using _ because it's only 1 character and communicates well > >> the idea "I don't care about this variable." > > > Not to me. As you noted, '_' is easily ambiguous. Explicit is better > > than implicit; the name 'dummy' makes it much clearer.
Actually, "_" isn't ambiguous at all. It's a perfectly well-defined variable name. It just seems most people don't know that, probably because most people never get the urge to name a variable "_". The whole reason I find myself wanting to use "_" is that "for _ in xrange (n):" goes beyond explicit to redundant if you're not using the index variable inside the loop. Ruby's version is much better in this respect, because every token matters. > In > fact, to me "dummy" implies that it holds a dummy value that will be > replaced later with the actual value needed. > > If you want an explicit name, try a variation of "dontcare". Assuming > that you're an English speaker. That reminds me... I saw some code once that used a dummy variable named "dont_give_a_shit". I got a few seconds of giggles out of it, at least. :-) > People seem to forget that "explicit" just means that there's a > convention that nearly everybody knows, and if you follow it, nearly > everybody will know what you mean. Often that convention is nothing more > than the meanings of words in whatever human language you're speaking, > but it's still a convention. Well, I'd argue that's only part of what "explicitness" means. In this specific use case, having to write the index variable isn't being explicit; it's a simple redundancy. Writing "_", or "dontcare" or "dont_give_a_shit" doesn't seem more explicit at all. It seems silly to have to write it at all if I don't intend to use it. I'd really prefer something like the Ruby syntax because all you have to write is the number of times you want to do something, and then the thing you want to do. (I guess, in that respect, I'd even consider the xrange call a redundancy.) Thanks, everyone for the replies. :-) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
