[Python-Dev] accumulator display syntax
Guido van Rossum
guido at python.org
Tue Oct 21 12:53:38 EDT 2003
[Skip]
> > Here's an alternate suggestion. Instead of inventing new syntax,
> > why not change the semantics of list comprehensions to be lazy?
> > They haven't been in use that long, and while they are popular,
> > the semantic tweakage would probably cause minimal disruption. In
> > situations where laziness wasn't wanted, the most that a
> > particular use would have to change (I think) is to pass it to
> > list().
Sorry, too late. You're hugely underestimating the backwards
compatibility issues. And they have been in use at least since 2000
(they were introduced in 2.0).
[Alex]
> I think we should keep the user-observable semantics as now, BUT
> maybe an optimization IS possible if all the user code does with the
> LC is loop on it (or anyway just get its iter(...) and nothing else).
But that's not very common, so I don't see the point of putting in the
effort, plus it's not safe. Using a LC as the sequence of a for loop
is ugly, and usually
for x in [y for y in S if P(y)]: ...
means the same as
for x in S:
if P(x): ...
except when it doesn't, and then making the list comprehension lazy
can be a mistake: the following example
for key in [k for k in d if d[k] is None]:
del d[key]
is *not* the same as
for key in d:
if d[key] is None:
del d
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
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