On Thu, 11 Sep 2008 03:36:35 -0500, Nick Craig-Wood wrote: > As an ex-perl programmer and having used python for some years now, I'd > type the explicit > > v1,v2,v3 = mydict['one'], mydict['two'], mydict['two'] # 54 chars > > Or maybe even > > v1 = mydict['one'] # 54 chars > v2 = mydict['two'] > v3 = mydict['two'] > > Either is only a couple more characters to type.
But that's an accident of the name you have used. Consider: v1,v2,v3 = section_heading_to_table_index['one'], \ section_heading_to_table_index['two'], \ section_heading_to_table_index['two'] # 133 characters versus: v1,v2,v3 = [section_heading_to_table_index[k] for k in ['one','two','two']] # 75 characters It also fails the "Don't Repeat Yourself" principle, and it completely fails to scale beyond a handful of keys. Out of interest, on my PC at least the list comp version is significantly slower than the explicit assignments. So it is a micro-optimization that may be worth considering if needed -- but at the cost of harder to maintain code. > It is completely > explicit and comprehensible to everyone, in comparison to > > v1,v2,v3 = [ mydict[k] for k in ['one','two','two']] # 52 chars > v1,v2,v3 = [ mydict[k] for k in 'one two two'.split()] # 54 chars That's a matter for argument. I find the list comprehension perfectly readable and comprehensible, and in fact I had to read your explicit assignments twice to be sure I hadn't missed something. But I accept that if you aren't used to list comps, they might look a little odd. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
