On 2 November 2016 at 21:50, David Mertz <mertz@gnosis.cx> wrote:
> Even though I really don't want new null-coalescing operators, I really
> appreciate the ternary operator in Python (or in C).
>
> On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 12:38 PM, Mikhail V <mikhailwas@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> result = a > b ? x : y
>>
>> is IMHO a syntactical herecy. Such things disgust me from programming.
>> Why on earth one cannot just wrap it in function
>> c = nicefunc(a,b)
>
>
> The problem here is that the general form isn't ONLY to return 'x' or 'y'
> but the decide between arbitrary values. Hard-coding the variables into the
> function loses 90%+ of the point.
>
> So the general function would need a signature like:
>
> c = nicefunc(a, b, x, y)
>
> The problem here is that this call might be:
>
> c = nicefunc(a, b, run_for_hours(), has_side_effects())
>
> We only want ONE of 'x' and 'y' to eagerly evaluate. In the C or Python
> ternary we get exactly that. Obviously, that also happens in your fully
> spelled out if/else block too, but that's multiline and needs to setup
> variables not just be used as an expression.
[Apologies for off-topic one more time]
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