[Python-3000] what do I use in place of reduce?

[Nicholas T]

On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 11:23 AM, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de>
wrote:

> This is getting off-topic, so you don't need to answer; I still ask:
> Why???

yes I know, apologies for not mailing the right list. I'll try to do so next
time. Dividing the previous result seems more logical: minutes = seconds/60,
hours=minutes/60, days=hours/24, not minutes=seconds/60, hours=seconds/3600,
days=seconds/86400. Also, if you do something like adding years, it's
simple--you just append to the list versus change the last thing to a modulo
and add another unit. If you add years, changing  days to sidereal days
would also be easier with the list. Also, you don't have to check
multiplication, etc.

[in answer to your next question as well] The example was created to show
the ability to express things with reduce, not necessarily to quickly
calculate human readable time.


> Even after knowing what this does, I still cannot easily understand
> how it does that. I think having reduce produce a growing value, and
> passing it an inhomogeneous list, is just deep abuse.

I guess I am likely to agree: the function is not associative or
commutative, and unable to be parallelized--one of the reasons reduce was
created.


> In any case, writing multiple lines is good, writing a single line only
> is bad.

I don't agree. If it's code you want to write once and never look at again,
having it out of the way can be nice.
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