The Underscore Archives

On Thu, 17 Dec 2009, Matt Hamilton wrote:

> 
> On 17 Dec 2009, at 16:35, Rick Edwards wrote:
> 
> > 2009/12/17 Matt Hamilton matth at netsight.co.uk
> >
> >>
> >> If the case is likely that bar will be in attributes you could do do
> >> the 'do it, then ask forgiveness' route:
> >>
> >> for foo,bar in attribute_data:
> >>    try:
> >>        attributes[bar].append(foo)
> >>    except KeyError:
> >>        attributes[bar] = [foo,]
> >>
> >
> > Tsk, using exception handling to control logical flow like this,  
> > shame on
> > you!
> 
> http://wiki.sheep.art.pl/Ask%20for%20Forgiveness

Might be faster; I'm not sure it reads as naturally (and the reason I like 
Python is that it tends to avoid clunky idioms*). If speed's _that_ 
essential there are other languages - I'm not sure that's really a valid 
excuse.

jan

* the exception being the overloading of "else" as a keyword in a way that 
was invented by a non-native English speaker.

-- 
jan grant, ISYS, University of Bristol. http://www.bris.ac.uk/
Tel +44 (0)117 3317661   http://ioctl.org/jan/
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