Yes, I often use min/max with gen. expressions: Compare: if min(f(x) for x in iterable if x>0) > 0:
Do you mean: if min((f(x) for x in iterable if x>0), default=0) > 0: ... I don't find that to be a clear expression of what you're trying to do. Too much logic forced into a one-liner (also note that the inner parens are required).
with _values = [f(x) for x in iterable if x>0] if _values and min(_values) > 0:
or with: if all(f(x)>0 for x in iterable if x>0): ... I think you're focusing on just one solution, one that involves piling-up too many extensions in one function that should be dirt simple. There are many other approaches: try/except, wrap the input in a default itertool, use all(), use next(it, default) to test the first value, etc.
The discussion has indeed sidetracked with handling the special cases, signature definition and whatnot, but I believe meeting the conditions you outlined above is not as rare as their number implies.
This may be a symptom of a particular programming style. I've found zero useful examples in scans of the standard library, in my own personal code base, or third-party extensions that I use regularly.
I hope the rest of the thread focuses on this motivating case so that this proposal is not rejected due to excessive bikeshedding.
A discussion of use cases is always helpful, but the rest of the discussion wasn't bikeshedding. It revealed that the default-argument doesn't make sense with non-iterable positional arguments and that some were confusing it with an initial-argument. No one yet has produced a clean, pure-python version that only affects a single iterable argument (ignoring positional cases where a default doesn't make sense) and that doesn't wrap the existing min/max code (it is important to look at the fully spelled-out pure python code to see that the overall design, taking all features into account, isn't clean). Also, I did a couple quick checks on other languages to see any use a default for empty min() but had no luck. Do you know of any languages where a min() with default is a proven best practice?
As an aside, it would be nice If min/max start raising a more narrow ValueError subtype, say EmptyIterableError, so that hacks such as checking the exception message are not necessary.
I would support that proposal if it would end this effort to complexify min/max. Raymond FWIW, here's an itertool recipe that you may find useful. def default(iterable, default=None): '''Yield elements of the iterable or if it is empty, yield the default. default([1,2,3], default=0) --> 1 2 3 default([], default=0) --> 0 ''' it = iter(iterable) return chain([next(it, default)], it)