[Python-Dev] Re: Trinary Operators (original) (raw)

Aahz aahz@pythoncraft.com
Thu, 6 Feb 2003 15:36:32 -0500

On Thu, Feb 06, 2003, Guido van Rossum wrote:

Gerald S. Williams:

I'm an even-day fan of trinary operators myself, but this opens too many questions. For example, with regard to short-circuiting, it will be inconsistent with other expressions at some level in either form or function. How so? If we give 'or' (and hence 'and') a higher priority -- i.e. binding tighter -- than 'if' and 'else', it's unambiguous to the parser and also consistent with the if statement: if x and y: print 1 else print 0 means the same as print 1 if x and y else 0 This is also similar to how lambda groups relative to and/or (and/or has a higher priority).

Are they really equivalent? What about

print h() if f() and g()

versus

if f() and g():
    print h()

Does g() get called if f() is false? What about h()?

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