Carl Banks wrote:
On Jul 24, 4:11 am, Jordan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Of course not.
I just think Explicit is better than Implicit is taken seriously by a
large segment the Python community as a guiding principle,
Yeah, try telling that to the people who advise writing "if x" instead
of "if x==0", or "if s" instead of "if len(s)==0".
Whether or not one should write 'if x' or 'if x != 0' [typo corrected]
depends on whether one means the general 'if x is any non-null object
for which bool(x) == True' or the specific 'if x is anything other than
numeric zero'. The two are not equivalent. Ditto for the length example.
What people do properly advise against is the strictly redundant 'if x
is True' or 'if x == True'. Both imply a misunderstanding of how 'if'
works in Python.
As a side note, the usefulness of specific comparisons is greater in 3.0
where spurious comparisons raise exceptions. In 3.0, 'if x >= 0'
specifically means 'if x is a number comparable to ints that is greater
than or equal to 0'. In 3.0, [] ==/!= 0 are still False/True, but one
could exclude incomparables with 'if 0 <= x >= 0' (==0) or 'if x > 0 or
x < 0' (!=0). Any such specific comparisons could be used with this
pattern.
try:
x = []
if x >= 0:
print('should not get here')
except TypeError as m:
if m.args[0].startswith('unorderable types:'):
print('Here because of bad comparison')
Terry Jan Reedy
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