Re: A technique from a chatbot

Thomas Passin wrote:

On 4/2/2024 1:47 PM, Piergiorgio Sartor via Python-list wrote:

On 02/04/2024 19.18, Stefan Ram wrote:

   Some people can't believe it when I say that chatbots improve
   my programming productivity. So, here's a technique I learned
   from a chatbot!
   It is a structured "break". "Break" still is a kind of jump,
   you know?
   So, what's a function to return the first word beginning with
   an "e" in a given list, like for example
[ 'delta', 'epsilon', 'zeta', 'eta', 'theta' ]
>
   ? Well it's
def first_word_beginning_with_e( list_ ):
     for word in list_:
         if word[ 0 ]== 'e': return word
>
   . "return" still can be considered a kind of "goto" statement.
   It can lead to errors:
>
def first_word_beginning_with_e( list_ ):
     for word in list_:
         if word[ 0 ]== 'e': return word
     something_to_be_done_at_the_end_of_this_function()
   The call sometimes will not be executed here!
   So, "return" is similar to "break" in that regard.
   But in Python we can write:
def first_word_beginning_with_e( list_ ):
     return next( ( word for word in list_ if word[ 0 ]== 'e' ), None )

>
Doesn't look a smart advice.
>

   . No jumps anymore, yet the loop is aborted on the first hit

 It's worse than "not a smart advice". This code constructs an unnecessary tuple, then picks out its first element and returns that.

I don't think there's a tuple being created.  If you mean:
     ( word for word in list_ if word[ 0 ]== 'e' )
...that's not creating a tuple.  It's a generator expression, which generates the next value each time it's called for.  If you only ever ask for the first item, it only generates that one.
When I first came across them, I did find it a bit odd that generator expressions look like the tuple equivalent of list/dictionary comprehensions.
FWIW, if you actually wanted a tuple from that expression, you'd need to pass the generator to tuple's constructor:
     tuple(word for word in list_ if word[0] == 'e')
(You don't need to include an extra set of brackets when passing a generator a the only argument to a function).
--
Mark.