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

Brett Cannon bcannon at gmail.com
Tue Sep 20 20:28:48 CEST 2005 
On 9/20/05, Michael Hudson <mwh at python.net> wrote:
[SNIP]
> I _like_ the explanation of 'and' and 'or' as they are now.  They are
> basically control flow constructs -- and have to be to get
> short-circuiting to work -- and adding a coercion to bool at the end
> seems to add complexity, not reduce it (on some levels, anyway).
> 

If you change the definition of 'and' and 'or' to be boolean
comparison operators (as Raymond is proposing) and not as control flow
constructs then is it really that complicated?  I think it would
actually simplify things very slightly since you just say a boolean is
returned instead of the last executed expression by the operator.

> > P.S.  Simplifying "and" and "or" may create a need to introduce a
> > conditional operator but that is a discussion for another day.
> 
> ... which was in the past, I thought.

It was, but changing 'and' and 'or' does tweak the usefulness of a
conditional operator.

-Brett
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