[Python-ideas] Break the dominance of boolean values in boolean context

[Greg Ewing]

On 14/09/11 05:56, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> I think I just mentioned one (turning 'if not' into a jump). Anyway,
> I'm glad to reject the PEP for the reason that I like the status quo
> just fine.

Did you see the comment I made concerning jump optimizations?
(Briefly, I don't think it would do any harm to keep performing
this optimization, since it wouldn't affect any of my intended
use cases.)

> Also, after reading the PEP from beginning to end ... I think the
> offered API is too complicated to be of much use.

There's a bit more machinery involved than there is with the
other operators, but I believe that any given use cases will
usually only *use* part of it. In particular, a system for
building parse trees only needs to implement the 2-operand
methods, which is no more complicated than overriding any of
the existing operators.

If it would help, I could provide a couple of fully-worked
examples, so you can see how complicated (or not) it would be
to use in practice.

There's also the possibility of simplifying the API if it's
considered that some of it will *never* be used, e.g. by
eliminating the machinery for custom short-circuiting.

> Certainly the NumPy folks have
> repeatedly claimed that they are fine with the status quo.

NumPy is not the only use case by a long shot. The main reason
I want it is for expressing database queries. You only have to
look at the contortions that things like Django have to go
through to wonder whether there's a better way.

Apologies if I appear to be flogging a resting equine here. If
you really don't want to think about it any more, I'll shut up.
But if it's going to be rejected, I'd prefer it to be rejected
for genuine reasons rather than FUD.

-- 
Greg