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PEP 308: I liked the original proposal better

Dave Brueck dave at pythonapocrypha.com
Mon Feb 24 11:46:06 EST 2003 
On Mon, 24 Feb 2003, Delaney, Timothy C (Timothy) wrote:

> > From: Greg Ewing (using news.cis.dfn.de) [mailto:me at privacy.net]
> >
> > As far as I can see, no one proposal appears to have
> > anywhere near a majority supporting it, and the minority
> > which supports x if C else y doesn't seem to be
> > significantly smaller than the minority supporting
> > any other single proposal.
> >
> > I just feel that it has been dismissed too soon.
>
> Nah - they've all been dismissed too late.
>
> The One True Pythonic Ternary Operator is
>
> class bool:
>
>     def ifelse (self, trueresult, falseresult, callable=False):
>         if self:
>             if callable:
>                 return trueresult()
>             else:
>                 return trueresult
>         else:
>             if callable:
>                 return falseresult()
>             else:
>                 return falseresult
>
> Short-circuiting and everything else required in one.
>
> this-was-going-to-be-a-wink-but-I-like-this-idea-ly yours

Better put the wink back in. :) Unfortunately, it doesn't provide short
circuiting for any of the times when short-circuiting is actually
important - it's unlikely that a parameterless function call would be that
useful, not to mention the more common uses like preventing invalid
attribute access, preventing divide by zero, etc. :(

-Dave
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