Newbie ?:A more concise way?

[Peter Hansen]

Brian wrote:
> 
> Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote in message news:<3C82FD24.122E16B3 at engcorp.com>...
> > Oops, sorry.  That sounds a little callous.  I really just meant
> > to give a response similar to my "programmers always try to optimize
> > when they don't really need to" diatribe.
> 
> I originally meant to ask a question more along the lines of "what is
> the most pythonic way of doing this."  Then I decided all that extra
> typing in my message was suboptimal.  Was that something that didn't
> really need optimization?  <cough>

Your first effort looked very Pythonic to me. :-)