"rantingrick" <rantingr...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1b285203-33f6-41fb-8321-381c154bc...@w12g2000yqj.googlegroups.com...
Let me tell you folks about a recent case of culo rojo i experianced
whilst creating a customized bin packer with Python. First i want to
say that i actually like the fact that i can do this..
py> a = []
py> if a:
... do something
Instead of this
py> if len(a) > 0:
... do something
Or perhaps: if len(a):
...
Ok but the buck stops with integers. Why? you ask in amazing
befuddlement...Well I happened upon this atrocity when creating
variables that hold indexes into a python list.
choiceIdx1 = None
choiceIdx2 = None
if array[0] meets condition this condition:
choiceIdx1 = 0
for i in range(len(array)):
if array[i] meets this condition:
choiceIdx2 = i
break
if choiceIdx1 and not choiceIdx2:
BUT THAT WONT WORK BECAUSE OF CRAPPY INTEGER BOOLEAN DEFAULTS! So i
had to do this crap...!
You can also blame the 0-based indexing in Python.
I'm not sure what would be the more fundamental change: changing over to
1-based indexing, or for 0 to be True (probably the opposite meaning to
every other language).
array = [c1,c2,c3,c4,c5,c6,...]
while looping:
choiceIdx1 = ()
choiceIdx2 = ()
if array[0] meets condition this condition:
choiceIdx1 = (0,)
for i in range(len(array)):
if array[i] meets this condition:
choiceIdx2 = (i,)
break
if choiceIdx1 and not choiceIdx2:
Seems kinda dumb to build a tuple just so a conditional wont blow
chunks! This integer bool-ing need to be fixed right away!
So, you're simply trying to signal whether a value is in the range 0 or
more, or not? That doesn't sound difficult: start with -1, then test whether
it's >=0.
But you're trying a boolean test where you expect None=False, and 0,1,2, etc
= True. While this would save typing in the condition, you're introducing
extraneous stuff elsewhere which makes it harder to read, such as (i,) just
to store an index.
--
Bartc
--
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