Elf Sternberg

There's no switch statement in python, right? Usually people use a pile of if/elif/elif/else statements, like this:

if   cmd == 'print': doprint()
elif cmd == 'save':  dosave()
elif cmd == 'read':  doread()
elif cmd == 'quit':  doquit()
else: raise ErrorMessage, "WTF?"

What Guido intended, however, was that we'd write this:

{ 'print': doprint,
  'save':  dosave,
  'read':  doread,
  'quit':  doquit }.get( cmd )()

Which is much more like the scheme-like engine he was implementing at the core of the Python interpreter. We can discuss whether the latter is more clear than the former, but you can't argue that it's much more concise. As one commenter wrote, "You've got a high-level language. Use it, for god's sake."