On Sep 23, 6:52 pm, Neal Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > In hindsight, I am disappointed with the choice of conditional syntax. I > know it's too late to change. The problem is > > y = some thing or other if x else something_else > > When scanning this my eye tends to see the first phrase and only later notice > that it's conditioned on x (or maybe not notice at all!). Particularly if > 'some thing or other' is long or complicated.
You're talking strictly about readability, which among other things is in the eye of the beholder, of course. Temporary variables can clean up some code, even if choosing names can be a hassle and it's more things to keep track of. Long lines and extra variables form a trade- off. You are writing a line with a conditional expression the value of which depends on something. What does it depend on, what is its value if that's true, and what is it if it's false? '...if...else...' only takes 6 characters... maybe you want more! If you're looking for a strictly syntactic construct, you can always "fire blanks", or tracers, if the analogy's more accurate. z= conditionally( x ) if b else y This could serve as a gentle reminder, even where 'conditionally' returns its argument, i.e. is the identity function. You can always roll your own ternary with extra parameters too: z= condition( b, x, y ) Just don't confuse it with threading.Condition. Otherwise, you're stuck with old syntax markers, and unless you wanted: z= if b then x else y You're out of options. You have to express it somehow. Did you want the condition first? Was there an alternative proposal you preferred? IINM if I'm not mistaken, z= b and x or y works just the same so long as x evaluates to True, as it will be tested. Feel free to write your own from scratch, and we'll see how close Python can come to resembling it. I suppose you can compare it to someone who stops listening before the word 'if', and completely misunderstands your statement. "Feed the dog if he's standing near the food dish" != "Feed the dog", which can of course lead to errors of both omission and commission (doing too little -or- too much). There's no way to fix that in a guaranteed way, except to say, "listen to the whole statement". And strictly sarcastically, what did you want to do with reading the program? Why were you reading it? <snicker, ducks> -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
