On Sep 24, 9:52 am, 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.
The struggle to get a conditional operator was a long and bitter, so in the first place we should be glad we aren't writing "y = (conditional and [p] or [q])[0] anymore. Since it was but grudgingly bestowed I thought BDFL had chosen this particular syntax just to be difficult. However since using it for a while, I am surprised how natural it is to use and read. A canonical use of the conditional operator is in pluralising words, (eg. '%s dollar' % n + 's' if n!=1 else ''). For this and similar short uses, where the regular if statement is an annoyance this syntax <ususal_case> if <conditions> else <unusual_case> works nicely. More complicated conditionals or cases are probably better handled by an if statement. This syntax is also probably not the best for nested conditionals. The latter, however, is probably feature rather than bug. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
