On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 1:42 AM, Grant Edwards wrote:
>  On 2008-05-07, Chester <wxpythoner@[...].com> wrote:
> 
> 
>  > if my_dictionary.has_key("orange"):                      UGLY
> 
>  I disagree.
> 
>  > if "orange" in my_dictionary:                                 CLEAN
> 
>  I disagree.
> 
>  In the first example it is obvious to the reader that you're
>  checking to see if my_dictionary contains "orange" as a key.
>  In the second example it is not obvious whether the code is
>  checking whether my_dictionary contains "orange" as a key or as
>  a value.
> 
>  I find the first version more obvious.

And, moreover, if you don't know that my_dictionary is a dictionary,
the "in" statement can be misleading, as it applied to lists too (and
tuples and possibly other things). If the dictionary is called
dataValues, for example, what are you going to understand if you read
something like:

if "orange" in dataValues:

? If the code is not from you and it's not adequately commented, you
have to go wandering around to find what the hell dataValues is. So,
the has_key is going to disappear in 3.0: of all the changes the BDFL
and the board of gurus could have implemented this is possibly the
least interesting, least useful and least "code-cleaning-oriented" one
they could think of.

Andrea.

"Imagination Is The Only Weapon In The War Against Reality."
http://xoomer.alice.it/infinity77/
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