On 27 oct, 10:27, Arnaud Delobelle <arno...@gmail.com> wrote: > Chris Rebert <c...@rebertia.com> writes: > > On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 11:25 PM, Geobird <a1chan...@gmail.com> wrote: > > >> I am a beginner in Python and would ask for a help. > > >> I was searching for smaller version of code to calculate > >> factorial . Found this one > >> def fact(x): > >> return x > 1 and x * fact(x - 1) or 1 > > >> But I don't really get how ( ....x > 1 and x * fact(x - 1)....) > >> works . > > > It exploits short-circuit evaluation > > (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-circuit_evaluation). This is > > stunt coding / code golf; no one should actually write factorial like > > that. > > True. It's far too verbose. I'd go for something like: > > f=lambda n:n<=0 or n*f(~-n) > > I've saved a few precious keystrokes and used the very handy ~- idiom! > > -- > Arnaud
I didn't know the idiom, nice tip. thanks -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
