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What to do after Python?

Kenneth Loafman ken at lt.com
Mon Feb 19 08:41:40 EST 2001 
Roy Smith wrote:
> 
> Kenneth Loafman <ken at lt.com> wrote:
> > Consider one case I found
> > where the goal was to remove the last character of a line.  Instead of
> > using something like:
> >
> >    if (strlen(s)) s[strlen(s)-1] = 0
> >
> > the (7-year C++ veteran) wrote several lines of code that:
> >
> >    reversed the string
> >    trimmed the first char
> >    re-reversed the string
> 
> How about:
> 
>    if (length = strlen(s))
>       s[length-1] = 0;
> 
> and cut your instruction count in half :-)

AArgh!  Been doing Python too long!  You can't assign in an if statement
in Python, so the awkward construct represented the worst of both.  In
retrospect, I'd probably write something like:

    if (s[0])
       s[strlen(s)-1] = 0

...Ken
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