For review: PEP 308 - If-then-else expression

Carlos Ribeiro cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br
Mon Feb 10 19:11:31 EST 2003


On Sunday 09 February 2003 17:42, Alex Martelli wrote:
> Carlos Ribeiro wrote:
> > On Saturday 08 February 2003 18:51, Christian Tismer wrote:
> >> b) reading and execution order should match as much as possible.
> >
> > Then I wonder why do people think that the following snippet is pythonic
> > in any (reasonable) way:
> >
> >   ','.join(lines)
> >
> > In what direction does it reads?
>
> Left to right:
>    From the literal string object ',',
>    fetch the attribute named 'join',
>    prepare the value of the variable named 'lines' as the argument,
>    and execute the attribute (must be a method) with the argument.

Alex,

You're _literally_ right :-). But that doesn't mean that it 'reads right'; my 
intention was to say,

  'I want my lines joined using commas as delimiters',

not:

  'Comma, please join these lines for me.'

btw, this particular discussion is already a few years old, and there's 
nothing that can be done about it (and I found myself using it lately, so it 
may be the right way to say it after all...)


Carlos Ribeiro
cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br





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