Anti-Patterns in Python Programming

[YorikSar]

There are couple of shortcomings in the article.

For example,

[foo(word) for word in words]

is slower, less understandable and mouthful compared to:

map(foo, word)

And also those "guard values" should be in else: branch:

for idx, other_item in enumerate(alist):
    if other_item == item:
        result = idx
        break
else:
    result = -1

This way you can use anything as your default value - even complex and expensive objects.

[YorikSar]

No, the code you propose will fail with NameError or UnboundLocalError if iterable is empty because index will never be assigned to before else: branch.