For review: PEP 308 - If-then-else expression
Andrew Koenig
ark at research.att.com
Sat Feb 8 10:21:32 EST 2003
>> Most of the people opposed to PEP 308 are giving purely subjective
>> reasons, disliking the whole idea so much that not only do they not
>> want to use it, but they want to prevent other people from doing so as
>> well.
holger> Let me guess which side you lean on :-)
I've already gone public: I'm +0.8. I like the overall idea, but
have slight misgivings about the infix "if" .
holger> Actually, in my book people gave quite some good reasons
holger> for opposing the PEP:
holger> a) it reads ugly especially in non-assignment statements
Subjective.
holger> b) it reuses a keyword which formerly was a clean indicator
holger> of a statement
Subjective, especially when you realize that "if" is already thus
reused in list comprehensions.
holger> c) you can't read it either LtR or RtL
Agreed -- that's why I'm +0.8 instead of +1.0.
holger> d) there are often better ways than doing the C-ish
holger> 'x ? y : z'
Agreed, but that's not an argument against PEP 308 unless you
change "often" to "always".
holger> e) adds to the stuff you have to learn if you read others code
Agreed, but the importance of that is subjective.
holger> f) is not an important enough use case to warrant new syntax
Subjective.
But what's not subjective is that several people have made statements
of the form ``I don't need it, because I can write X instead'' and
then proceeded to give alternatives that were just plain broken.
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