Good code patterns in Python

Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters mertz at gnosis.cx
Tue Jul 1 14:26:51 EDT 2003


|hwlgw at hotmail.com (Will Stuyvesant) wrote:
|>     if some_condition:
|>         some_name = some_value
|>     else:
|>         some_name = other_value
|> is often a mistake.  Much better, safer, would be:
|>     some_name = some_value
|>     if not some_condition:
|>         some_name = other_value

mis6 at pitt.edu (Michele Simionato) wrote previously:
|I am sorry, but I feel that the first form is MUCH more readable than the
|second one; the first form is crystal clear to me, whereas I must read
|the second form two or three times to understand what it is going on.

Moreover, actual code often assigns from computations, not simply one
name to another.  The harder-to-read form risks bad side effects (or
simply a performance hit):

    some_name = some_computation()
    if not some_condition:
        some_name = other_computation()

The straightforward if/else form avoids superfluous computations.

Yours, Lulu...

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