Tertiary Operation

[Fredrik Lundh]

Roy Smith wrote:

> Why not just:
> 
> if x is None:
>    result = str(x)
> else:
>    result = ""
> 
> It's a couple more lines of code, but it's obvious what it means.

and if you're doing this a few times, putting it in a function is even 
better.

     def tostring(obj):
         if obj is None:
             return ""
         return str(obj)

     print tostring(key)
     print tostring(foo), tostring(bar)
     file.write(tostring(record[1]))

this also makes it easier to tweak things once you realize that not 
everything should be passed through str():

     def tostring(obj):
         if obj is None:
             return ""
         if isinstance(obj, basestring):
             return obj
         return str(obj)

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