Trinary operator?

[Andrew Dalke]

Philipp Lenssen:
>can I use something like
>    verboseGender = (gender == 'm') ? 'male' : 'female'
>in Python?

No.  Search the archives for "ternary operator" for plenty of
past discussion.  Google lists 65 posts for comp.lang.python.

Besides, for this specific case you should have some error checking,
because there are genders other than 'male' and 'female' (eg,
asexual bacteria and hermaphradite earthworms).

  verboseGenderTable = {
     "m": "male",
     "f": "female",
  }
  verboseGender = verboseGenderTable[gender]

Then if something other than 'm' or 'f' is used, this will raise
a KeyError.

                Andrew
                dalke at dalkescientific.com