[Python-ideas] Accessing the result of comprehension's expression from the conditional

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sun, 21 Jun 2009 04:08:05 am Lie Ryan wrote:
> Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> >> The advantage of F being callable is that it does not need
> >> semantic change, the filtering part will be done before expression
> >> just like it is right now.
> >
> > That's not true. It can't be true. If you want to filter on x**x
> > being greater than 100, you need to calculate x**x first. In
> > theory, a sufficiently clever compiler could recognise that, say,
> > x**x < 100 implies 0 <= x < 3.59728 (approx), but in general, you
> > can't predict the value of f(x) without actually calculating f(x).
>
> Did you read the middle part of the post and the diagram, which
> address the question you're asking and how it would be handled?

Yes. It made no sense to me at all.

Let's make a practical example:


c = 1246158315.0  # approximately a week from now
L = filter(lambda t: t > c, [time.time() for x in range(20)])

becomes:

L = [time.time() as F for x in range(20) if F() > c]

How do you expect your proposed syntax to determine whether or not the 
current time is greater than c without actually checking the current 
time?

Note also that your proposal requires list comps to become like lambda. 
Using your earlier example:

[x**x as F for x in lst if F() < 100]

This doesn't bind the value of x**x to the name F, but the expression 
x**x to F. That makes it like a lambda:

lambda x: x**x

except the name x is implied and some sort of magic takes place to 
ensure that by the time you call F(), the appropriate value of x is 
still around. If this is to apply to generator expressions as well, 
calling F() could occur some arbitrarily large time later.

That means that 

[time.time() for x in lst]

will create a list that looks something like:

[1245555766.5681751, 1245555767.2609128, ...]


but your proposed:

[time.time() as F for x in lst]

will create a list something like:

[<function F at 0x88a879c>, <function F at 0x88a8d84>, ...]




-- 
Steven D'Aprano