On 2015-09-29 21:43, Jeff Hardy wrote:
On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 10:35 AM, Barry Warsaw <barry@python.org <mailto:barry@python.org>> wrote:
On Sep 28, 2015, at 03:04 PM, Carl Meyer wrote:
>But even if they are rejected, I think a simple `??` or `or?` (or >however it's spelled) operator to reduce the repetition of "x if x is >not None else y" is worth consideration on its own merits. This operator >is entirely unambiguous, and I think would be useful and frequently >used, whether or not ?. and ?[ are added along with it.
But why is it an improvement? The ternary operator is entirely obvious and readable, and at least in my experience, is rare enough that the repetition doesn't hurt my fingers that much. It seems like such a radical, ugly new syntax unjustified by the frequency of use and readability improvement.
I use it all over the place in C# code, where it makes null checks much cleaner, and the punctuation choice makes sense:
var x = foo != null ? foo : ""; var y = foo ?? "";
(it also has other uses in C# relating to nullable types that aren't relevant in Python.)
I'd argue the same is true in Python, if a decent way to spell it can be found:
x = foo if foo is not None else "" y = foo or? ""
It's pure syntactic sugar, but it *is* pretty sweet.
(It would also make get-with-default unnecessary, but since it already exists that's not a useful argument.)
It's only just occurred to me that there's a small inconsistency here. The "?.", "?[" and "?(" will short-circuit on None, whereas the "??" will short-circuit on non-None. Would that cause any confusion in practice?