Boolean tests [was Re: Attack a sacred Python Cow]

[Heiko Wundram]

Am Dienstag, 29. Juli 2008 11:15:05 schrieb Heiko Wundram:
> I can't dig up a simple example from code I wrote quickly...

Just to get back to that: an example I found where "if x" (the generic 
__nonzero__() test) will work to test for emptiness/non-emptiness of a 
container, whereas "if len(x) > 0" (the "specific" test for this example) 
will not, is my for own integer set type I wrote a while back (which you can 
find on ASPN).

The corresponding set type allows you to create infinitely sized sets of 
integers (which of course are stored as pairs of <start>,<stop>-values, so 
the storage itself for the set is bounded), for which len(x) does not have 
a "proper" meaning anymore, and __len__() is limited to returning a (platform 
dependent) ssize_t anyway IIRC, so even with a bounded set, the length of the 
set might not necessarily be accessible using len(x); that's why the set type 
additionally got a member function called .len() to work around this 
restriction.

I should think is a non-contrieved example where the generic test whether the 
object considers itself True/False (which for containers means 
non-empty/empty) is preferrable over the special case test whether the length 
is positive. A polymorphic function, which for example only accesses the 
first ten members of the container is able to work with an infinite set if it 
uses the generic test, but is not in case it uses len(x) > 0.

-- 
Heiko Wundram