[Tutor] Need help in making this code more pythonic

[Rich Lovely]

> --- On Sun, 7/26/09, ammar azif <ceasar102 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> From: ammar azif <ceasar102 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [Tutor] Need help in making this code more pythonic
> To: tutor at python.org
> Date: Sunday, July 26, 2009, 6:23 AM
>
> Hello,
>
> I need some suggestions on how to make this code pythonic. The program
> basically runs a simulation of an object that moves on a 2D plane. The
> object keeps on moving from its current coordinate to  randomly picked
> adjacent coordinates with the object is not allowed to move move to a
> previously covered coordinate point as the rule. If the object is unable to
> move the program will terminate. Some of the concerns I have in mind is the
> code in the move method in Person class. I am sure there are some built-in
> methods or features in python that I could use to improve the implementation
> of that method. Hope you guys can enlighten me.
>
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>
>

A Couple of pointers:

Rather than having a dict with all values == None, you can use a set
(which is effectively the same thing, but looks cleaner and is easier
to read).

Us the "k in d" operator rather than d.has_key(k)


x = position[0]
y = position[1]

is more pythonically written

x,y = position

using tuple unpacking.


rather than using
cannot_move = True
and then
if cannot_move:

You'd be more pythonic to use

if not potential_positions:

An empty list is false in a boolean context, a list with one or more
items is true.

Rather than using random.rand_int(len(...)) to generate an index, you
can go straight to the result by using random.choice(...)


You might also want to add some docstrings to your class and its move
method, so that you can tell at a glance what the class does.  A
docstring is simple a string on the first (non-blank) line after the
definition:

    def move(self):
        "Moves person one space in a random direction.  It is not
permitted to move to a previous occupied position"

Finally, you might want to put the code doing the actual work into a
"if __name__ == "__main__": block, so that you can import the script
as a module, and not get extra output. Take a look at some of the
files in the standard library to see what I mean.

-- 
Rich "Roadie Rich" Lovely
There are 10 types of people in the world: those who know binary,
those who do not, and those who are off by one.