On Mon, 13 May 2013 21:17:41 +0000, Alister wrote:
> I would then still write it as not (x == y) to make it clear to myself &
> avoid any possible confusion although I think that X != Y is much
> cleaner.
I think that is sad. If I read "not (x == y)" I would assume that the
person writing the code didn't understand Python syntax or know its
standard operators.
The exception is if x or y was some unusual type where the __ne__ method
does something different to the logical reverse of the __eq__ method. But
if that is the case, I would expect a comment warning about it. If x and
y were standard objects like floats, strings, etc. then writing out
not (x == y) in full is as sensible as writing out these in full:
x + -y # instead of x - y
alist.insert(len(alist), 99) # instead of alist.append(99)
# instead of adict.clear()
for key in list(adict.keys()):
del adict[key]
x+x+x+x+x+x # instead of x*6
I'm sure any experienced Python programmer can come up with a
hypothetical scenario where you would need to write things out "the long
way", but that doesn't mean that we should do so all the time.
> 2 lines from the zen stand out here:-
>
> Explicit is better than implicit.
> in the face of ambiguity refuse the temptation to guess.
!= is explicit.
There is no ambiguity that needs to be guessed.
--
Steven
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