4 ms·

The walrus operator did not exist before 3.8, there was no real alternative before. The backlash was from people who dislike the idea and would prefer Python di

• UncleEntity 4y ago
  The operator didn’t exist but the functionality did. It was just a side effect of python’s wonky variable scoping which they gave an operator. I’m not familiar with how it works now but the example I remember was the variables escaping from list comprehension statements, like: x = [y for y in z] if y != z[-1]: bad_stuff_happened() Or something like that, maybe I’m wrong, honestly never had a use for the walrus.
  • Kwpolska 4y ago
    Python’s scoping rules are wonky, but the walrus is generally useful in two cases. The first one is to define a variable in an `if` and only run the contents of the `if` if the variable is truey — for example, re.search returns a Match object or None: if (m := re.search("regex is(n't)? fun")): print("there was a match") # do something with m The other would be defining a variable in the `if` clause of a list comprehension and using it in the output (which is not necessary in languages where map/filter is a first-class citizen, because you could just map before you filter): [y for x in xs if (y := f(x)) == 5] I can’t think of a way to define a variable in either of those cases without using the walrus and without significantly extending the code (you can define the `m` object and then do `if m:` on two lines, or you can nest two list comprehensions).
    • Dagger2 4y ago
      There's also: while data := fh.read(131072): # do stuff which is a lot nicer than: while True: data = fh.read() if not data: break # do stuff