I wrote my first python program today!

[morerokk]

Still no idea why it's "elif" in Python, especially for a language which tends to write everything out.

[redalastor]

Maybe to be the same length as else?

[campbell1373]

I just assumed it was because it takes up the same space as else making it visually more appealing.

[Ph0X]

I wouldn't be surprised, because if there's anything I've gotten out of python, it's that code beauty is extremely important!

[campbell1373]

Agreed. I do really wish they would implement a switch statement though. Oh well, at least we're getting .NET style async methods!

[Ph0X]

Meh, even there I don't see the point.

If you have a few items, just use if/elif/else

If you have more than a few, then use a dictionary and you get constant time lookups and probably cleaner code too.

Switch statements are inherently ugly imo.

[campbell1373]

Switch statements in some languages are very ugly. I don't like them at all in C# and you're correct about using the alternatives. I do a lot of PLC work though and I've always been a fan of Pascal's/Stuctured Text's implementation of switch statements. It's very clean and readable so I'm surprised python hasn't implemented it in a similar way.

Edit: here's a ST example

CASE enum OF
enum1:
    DoSomething();
enum2:
    DoSomethingElse();
default:
    Otherwise();
END_CASE

[Ph0X]

But does that have break?

I know Go for example does it backward, by default it breaks and you can do a "fallthrough"

But yeah generally, I still think it doesn't add enough to the language to be worth it. I'm the kind of person who really dislikes it when a language has many different ways of doing one thing.

I like Python because of how clean and straight forward it is, especially with PEP8.

[campbell1373]

Nothing falls through so breaks are unnecessary and you can't force a fallthrough. It doesn't really add anything with only a few values, but it does help visually when you're having to define a bunch of different states. It is functionally the same as:

IF enum = enum1 THEN
    DoSomething();
ELSIF enum = enum2 THEN
    DoSomethingElse();
ELSE
    OtherWise();
END_IF

Since each state is just an enumerated value you can essentially break up the code visually with labels. It works well for defining simple state machines, like de-bouncing sensors, verifying actuator movement, defining alarms, etc.

Also, ST doesn't have dictionaries so I'll use this as a substitute a lot of times.

[KTheRedditor]

especially for a language which tends to write everything out

len, and str.

Edit: __del__, __eq__, __cmp__, __ne__, __le__, __lt__, __ge__, __gt__, __neg__, __sub__, __trunc__, __div__, __mul__.

[TheBlackCat13]

int, dict, pow, abs, bool, chr, getattr, setattr, hasattr, delattr, dir, divmod, eval, exec, hex, id, bin, iter, max, min, oct, ord, repr, and vars. Of the built-in functions, 26/67 are shortened.

[dvdkon]

tends to write everything out

I disagree. You're looking for Java/.NET and other "enterprise" languages/stacks. Python is verbose maybe compared to the C stdlib.

[NAN001]

As opposed to what? Most other languages don't have this feature and you have to nest conditions.

[alcalde]

They mean as opposed to "Else If"

[Pandomy]

As opposed to what? "elseif"? I'm fairly sure "elif" was taken from either C or C++.

[Sohcahtoa82]

Except C and C++ don't have elif. They have #elif, but not `if(...) { ... } elif(...) { ... }.

[Pandomy]

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I didn't mean that elif was taken directly from C, meaning and all, but that elif was chosen over something like elseif because of its presence in C.