[Python-Dev] "and" and "or" operators in Py3.0

Tue Sep 20 02:13:05 CEST 2005

> P.S. Simplifying "and" and "or" may create a need to introduce a
> conditional operator but that is a discussion for another day.

While I don't disagree with some of your main points, I do think that 
your proposal would eliminate a natural and easy to understand use of 
the current behavior of "or" that I tend to use quite a bit. Your 
proposal would break a lot of code, and I can't think of a better 
"conditional operator" than the one thats already there.
I often find myself using 'or' to conditionally select a meaningful 
value in the absence of a real value:
 person = Person.fetch(id=5)
 name = person.name or 'John Doe'
 birth_date = person.birth_date or '00-00-0000'
 ssn = person.social_security or 'not provided'
 logger.log_msg('%s born on %s with SSN %s' % (name, birth_date, 
ssn))
To me, its just as natural as:
 { 'key' : value }.get('not_there', 'default')
but more general purpose. I like the current behavior, and I think 
it makes a whole lot of sense.
Jonathan LaCour
http://cleverdevil.org