[Tutor] Doubts galore.

[Steve Willoughby]

On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 09:43:34PM +0530, prasad rao wrote:
> > It would probably be cleaner to use one-line
> >  conditional statements (sparingly) where they make
> >  sense on their own, but not to mix multi-line and
> >  single line styles in the same if-else structure.
> 
> I am a newbie.I couldn't understand that comment.

So occasionally it's cleaner and clearer to put the
condition and statement on one line like

if x>0: print x

But often you need more than one line, so you make
a block structure:

if x>0:
  do_stuff()
  do_more_stuff()

If you have multiple blocks in an if-elif-elif-...-else
structure, don't go back and forth between one-line
and multi-line blocks, be consistent, so instead of
something like

if x>0: do_one_thing()
elif x<0:
  do_something_else(-x)
  something_entirely_different(x**2)
elif x==0 and y>0:
  do_something_else(y)
  yet_another_function(y**3)
else: raise ValueError('values for x and y not in allowed range')

you should be consistent and write this as:

if x>0: 
    do_one_thing()
elif x<0:
    do_something_else(-x)
    something_entirely_different(x**2)
elif x==0 and y>0:
    do_something_else(y)
    yet_another_function(y**3)
else: 
    raise ValueError('values for x and y not in allowed range')
 
-- 
Steve Willoughby    |  Using billion-dollar satellites
steve at alchemy.com   |  to hunt for Tupperware.