anonymous assignment

[Ben Finney]

Paul Rubin <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> writes:

> Yves Dorfsman <yves at zioup.com> writes:
> > I know you can't assign anything to None, but I'm sure you get what I
> > mean, a special keyword that means I don't care about this value.

Snap. This topic was raised today in another thread.

> You can just use a variable name than you ignore. It's traditional
> to use _ but it's not a special keyword, it's just a another
> variable name:
> 
>    y, _, d, _, _, _, _, _, _ = time.localtime()

It's a terrible name for that purpose, since it doesn't indicate the
intention explicitly, and it's already overloaded in meaning by a
pre-existing convention (ref. the 'gettext' module in Python and many
other languages).

Far better to use the name 'unused' as suggested by Carl Banks earlier
today.

(good sigmonster, have a cookie)

-- 
 \            "Choose mnemonic identifiers. If you can't remember what |
  `\                mnemonic means, you've got a problem." —Larry Wall |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney