Can I use a conditional in a variable declaration?

[volcs0]

I've done this in Scheme, but I'm not sure I can in Python.

I want the equivalent of this:

if a == "yes":
answer = "go ahead"
else:
answer = "stop"

in this more compact form:
a = (if a == "yes": "go ahead": "stop")
is there such a form in Python? I tried playing around with lambda
expressions, but I couldn't quite get it to work right.

[Jeffrey Schwab]

Georg Brandl wrote:

Jeffrey Schwab wrote:

vo****@gmail.co m wrote:

I want the equivalent of this:

if a == "yes":
answer = "go ahead"
else:
answer = "stop"

def mux(s, t, f):
if s:
return t
return f

But be aware that this is not a complete replacement for a syntactic
construct. With that function, Python will always evaluate all three
arguments, in contrast to the and/or-form or the Python 2.5 conditional.

Absolutely true, and I should have mentioned it. In languages that
allow ?: syntax, I rarely rely on its short-circuit effect, but it
certainly is a significant difference.

[Sion Arrowsmith]

Ron Adam <rr*@ronadam.co m> wrote:

vo****@gmail.c om wrote:

I want the equivalent of this:

if a == "yes":
answer = "go ahead"
else:
answer = "stop"

in [a] more compact form:

I sometimes find it useful to do:

answers = {True: "go ahead", False: "stop"}
answer = answers[a == "yes"]

In this particular case, you can get it even more compact as

answer = {"yes": "go ahead"}.get(a, "stop")

but that's sacrificing elegance and readability for bytes. When I find
myself with code like the OP's, I usually rewrite as:

answer = "stop"
if a == "yes":
answer = "go ahead"

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