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[Python-Dev] "and" and "or" operators in Py3.0

Aahz aahz at pythoncraft.com
Tue Sep 20 05:57:38 CEST 2005 
On Mon, Sep 19, 2005, Jonathan LaCour wrote:
> Raymond Hettinger:
>>
>> P.S.  Simplifying "and" and "or" may create a need to introduce a
>> conditional operator but that is a discussion for another day.
> 
> While I don't disagree with some of your main points, I do think that  
> your proposal would eliminate a natural and easy to understand use of  
> the current behavior of "or" that I tend to use quite a bit.  Your  
> proposal would break a lot of code, and I can't think of a better  
> "conditional operator" than the one thats already there.
> 
> I often find myself using 'or' to conditionally select a meaningful  
> value in the absence of a real value:
> 
>      person = Person.fetch(id=5)
>      name = person.name or 'John Doe'
>      birth_date = person.birth_date or '00-00-0000'
>      ssn = person.social_security or 'not provided'

While I'm in philosophical agreement with Raymond, it's also true that my
current company's code is littered with constructs like yours.  So I have
to say that it would break too much code.
-- 
Aahz (aahz at pythoncraft.com)           <*>         http://www.pythoncraft.com/

The way to build large Python applications is to componentize and
loosely-couple the hell out of everything.
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