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merits of Lisp vs Python

Slawomir Nowaczyk slawomir.nowaczyk.847 at student.lu.se
Fri Dec 15 17:38:57 EST 2006 
On Fri, 15 Dec 2006 17:21:12 +0100
André Thieme <address.good.until.2006.dec.22 at justmail.de> wrote:

#> And we might go further (again with an easy Graham example).
#> See this typical pattern:
#> 
#> result = timeConsumingCalculation()
#> if result:
#>    use(result)
#> 
#> We need this ugly temporary variable result to refer to it.
#> If we could use the anaphor[1] "it" that could make situations like
#> these more clean.
#> 
#> Imagine Python would have an "anaphoric if", "aif". Then:
#> 
#> aif timeConsumingCalculation():
#>    use(it)

I would spell the above like this:

      def timeConsumingCalculation():
          pass
      def useit(it):
          pass
      
      def aif(first,second):
          res = first()
          if res:
              second(res)
      
      aif(timeConsumingCalculation,useit)
      
Sure, it requires me to define function useit instead of embedding the
code in aif call, but that has never been a problem for me: in reality,
the code I would want to execute would be complex enough to warrant it's
own function anyway. Of course, YMMV.

-- 
 Best wishes,
   Slawomir Nowaczyk
     ( Slawomir.Nowaczyk at cs.lth.se )

Real programmers can write assembly code in any language.
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