Modern Programming

[marcos@lemmy.world]

You'd be surprised.

But seriously, numbers can be used as booleans in an impressive number of languages. Including machine code for almost every machine out there.

[kaboom@reddthat.com]

Why is the return first?

[kn0wmad1c@programming.dev]

That makes sense. However, num % 2 equaling 0 would mean it's even, and not "odd" like the ternary operator is outputting, yeah?

[kn0wmad1c@programming.dev]

Ah that makes sense.

[sleeplessone@lemmy.ml]

In JS at least, there's a concept of truthiness and falsiness. 0, undefined, null, and a few other non-boolean values are treated as false if used in conditionals and logical operations, while every other value is treated as true. I'm pretty sure python has something similar.

[jacksilver@lemmy.world]

I think the idea is it reads more naturally, so you can read it like this return A if statement is true else return B

[dreadpirateshawn@lemmy.blahaj.zone]

The ternary syntax is really my only real gripe with python design -- putting the conditional BETWEEN the true and false values feels so very messy to me.

[bassturd@lemmy.world]

Edit... I reread your comment and realized that python does it differently and that everything I typed was irrelevant... I'm still gonna leave it if anyone is interested in ternary expressions, but I suppose the answer to your question is, that's just how python does it.

That's how ternary operators are designed to work. In essence, if you're looking to do a single line if/then, you can directly assign a variable from the result of a ternary expression.

As an example, I was scripting something earlier where there may or may not be a value returned from a function, but I still had to do something with that return value later. For this thing, I was using JavaScript.

I ended up with:

return platform == "name"  ? "Option 1" : "Option 2"

If I were to write that out in a typical if/then it would be:

if (platform == "name") {
    return "option 1"
} else {
    return "option 2"
}

A ternary starts with a boolean expression, then the if true value, else the false value. That's returned to either a variable or if in a function like my example, to the object calling the function. It's just a way to write less code that in many cases is easier to read.

[conditional_soup@lemm.ee]

Are you sure it isn't just that he's Dutch?

[rbos@lemmy.ca]

It's kinda natural to me having used Perl a lot.

[satyrsack@lemmy.sdf.org]

Are you just referring to how Python uses the English and/or instead of the more common &&/||? I think what the user above you was talking about was Lua's strange ternary syntax using and/or.

[satyrsack@lemmy.sdf.org]

It doesn't make sense. I understand it, but it doesn't make sense.

[wise_pancake@lemmy.ca]

You would not believe the number of people I’ve interviewed who excel at making Python read like ass.

[entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org]

I mean, it does have enough ways to write the same thing that it can really allow for some funny code golf, but some people just have no sense of readability whatsoever.

[spacenoodle@lemmy.world]

That's not quite the argument you might think it is

[rbos@lemmy.ca]

Argument?

[mdhughes@lemmy.sdf.org]

print( ["even", "odd"][num % 2] )

If you need to avoid evaluating the wrong branch:

print( [lambda: "even", lambda: "odd"][num % 2]() )

[ephera@lemmy.ml]

For optimal performance, you should rewrite it in Rust:

inline_python::python! {
    print(js2py.eval_js("(number) => number % 2 ? 'odd' : 'even'")(number))
};

[spacenoodle@lemmy.world]

You know, the stuff in @_

[lime@feddit.nu]

no, the linked table shows how python also returns the first non-falsey result of an a or b expression rather than just giving a boolean. it's useful for initialising optional reference args:

def foo(a: list = None)
    a = a or []

works with and as well.