Defending the ternary operator

[Jeremy Fincher]

Carlos Ribeiro <cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br> wrote in message news:<mailman.1044730161.12704.python-list at python.org>...
> While I agree that programmers love to save keystrokes, in some cases is more 
> important to save line count. Long blocks of code tend to be hard to read,

But they're significantly easier to read than the same code on a
single line.
 
> If used **with care**, conditional operators may allow to eliminate a few 
> 'auxiliary' if statements out of the way, thereby making the structure 
> clearer. Things such as selecting values for printing, etc., don't need to 
> stay on the way, and may be distracting when looking at the code.

But *all* the code still needs to be read by anyone wanting to
understand it well.  It might as well be on separate lines for ease of
readability.

I may be alone in this, but I find

if condition:
   do_something()

To be significantly more readable than:

if condition: do_something()

The indentation shows me the control stucture much better.  An
if-expression would make the latter far more common than it already
is.

Jeremy