On 2008-04-17, Gary Herron <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> For example, let's say I want to assign a bunch of variables to an
>> initial, single value. In C or a similar language you would do:
>>
>> CONSTANT1 =
>> /* This is some constant */
>> CONSTANT2 =
>> CONSTANT3 =
>>
>> /*This is yet some other constant */
>> CONSTANT =
>>
>> 1;
>
>
> Yuck! No way!! If you *want* to make your code that hard to
> read, I'm sure you can find lots of ways to do so, even in
> Python, but don't expect Python to change to help you toward
> such a dubious goal.
>
> Seriously, examine your motivations for wanting such a syntax.
> Does it make the code more readable? (Absolutely not.) Does
> it make it more maintainable. (Certainly not -- consider it
> you needed to change CONSTANT2 to a different value some time
> in the future.)
You move the initialization of CONSTANT2 out of that construct
and set it to whatever you want.
Consider the case where you have this:
constant1 = <some complicated expression>
constant2 = <some complicated expression>
constant3 = <some complicated expression>
constant4 = <some complicated expression>
constant5 = <some complicated expression>
constant6 = <some complicated expression>
What happens when the initial value needs to change? You have
to change it in six places instead of in one place as you would
if you did this:
constant1 = \
constant2 = \
constant3 = \
constant4 = \
constant5 = \
constant6 = <some complicated expression>
Having the same information be duplicated N times is bad. In
C, the above construct can be used to solve that problem
efficiently. In Python the right thing to do is probably this:
initialValue = <some complicated expression>
constant1 = initialValue
constant2 = initialValue
constant3 = initialValue
constant4 = initialValue
constant5 = initialValue
constant6 = initialValue
>> I find this limitation very annoying.
If you continue to try to write C code in a Python program,
you're going to continue to be annoyed. Start writing Python
code when working on Python programs and writing C code when
working on C programs. I write a lot of both and have no
problem switching back and forth other than an occasional
extraneous ";" in my python code.
Using an editor with good C and Python modes helps.
--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! ... I want to perform
at cranial activities with
visi.com Tuesday Weld!!
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