[Tutor] New to this list ....

[Russel Winder]

Barry,

On Fri, 2012-03-30 at 18:27 +0100, Barry Drake wrote:
> On 30/03/12 17:58, Mark Lawrence wrote:
> > The recipe here
> > http://code.activestate.com/recipes/410692-readable-switch-construction-without-lambdas-or-di/ 
> >
> > refers to several other recipes which you might want to take a look 
> > at, sorry I meant to mention this earlier.
> >
> 
> Oh, that's neat.  Not worth putting into my little project, but I've 
> bookmarked that on for when I need a lot of cases.  It also shows how to 
> define a class - that was something I had wondered about, but not yet 
> tackled.

Be aware of the sensible warnings though.  switch in C is generally O(1)
whereas this Python simulacrum remains O(n).  The people who comment
saying C switch is always O(n) have clearly never looked at any compiler
output.

Personally, I am in the camp that says: don't use a device that makes it
appear the performance is not what it is.  Thus I would prefer
if/elif/else cascade over this device since it is simpler and more
obvious that it is O(n).

But it is a nice example of what Python can achieve even though I would
not use it myself.

-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder at ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel at winder.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder
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