Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!news.albasani.net!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Gregory Ewing Newsgroups: comp.lang.python Subject: Re: checking if a list is empty Date: Sat, 14 May 2011 14:34:51 +1200 Lines: 14 Message-ID: <93682bFq0fU2@mid.individual.net> References: <200e93c2-6b87-4113-9c6f-85815e51ea77@28g2000yqu.googlegroups.com> <4dc4b3c5$0$29991$c3e8da3$5496439d@news.astraweb.com> <931adaF9g1U1@mid.individual.net> <4dcc785e$0$29980$c3e8da3$5496439d@news.astraweb.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: individual.net S1GA2788BbyONxbG5ye0DgPpWU8pLQpt5Q0IFD+RbSqZ5zOGdY Cancel-Lock: sha1:fLzSVr2jhW9osOl0+8YjVyW0a0w= User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.5 (Macintosh/20050711) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en In-Reply-To: Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.python:5333 rusi wrote: > Dijkstra's problem (paraphrased) is that python, by choosing the > FORTRAN alternative of having a non-first-class boolean type, hinders > scientific/mathematical thinking/progress. Python doesn't have the flaw that Dijkstra was talking about. Fortran's flaw wasn't so much the lack of a boolean type, but that you couldn't assign the result of a logical expression to a variable. Python has always been able to do that, even before it had a distinct boolean type. -- Greg