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For review: PEP 308 - If-then-else expression

Paul Rubin phr-n2003b at NOSPAMnightsong.com
Sat Feb 8 16:49:48 EST 2003 
"Samuele Pedroni" <pedronis at bluewin.ch> writes:
> I sympathize but the question is really what you prefer your target group to
> encounter:
> 
> 1) sys.exit(errs and 1 or 0)
>     style = bold and "bold" or "italic"
> 
> or
> 
> 2) sys.exit(1 if errs else 0)
>     style = "bold" if  bold else "italic"
> 
> because (1) idioms are used in practice.
> 
> Personally I have no problem with (1) idioms and I don't like (2) forms, or
> more in general I have yet to see a ternary cond op form that I like.
> So I'm happy with the status quo, workarounds included and their
> limititations.

Your post is very interesting since it's the first one where I've
heard someone actually claim to prefer (1) to (2), rather than offering
(1) as a kludgy workaround but really preferring a multi-line if statement.

FWIW I find the (1) forms awful and greatly prefer (2).  Think of
Andrew Koenig's example,

    maximum = x > y and x or y

which follows the form of (1) but is simply incorrect some of the
time, which you might not immediately notice.  Who needs to expose
themselves to that kind of error?
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