My favourite scripting language by far is Python. I’m always finding cool things in the language that I didn’t know were there. Even though I’ve been writing scripts in it for years, today I discovered that you can use maths-style ranges in comparisons.
Whereas in most languages to check a value x
is within a range (say, 5 or more but less than 20),
you might do:
// In C:
if (x >= 5 && x < 20) { ... code ... }
# In Python (without using the cool thing)
if x >= 5 and x < 20: # code
In Python, you can write the more mathsy:
if 5 <= x < 20: # code
Just a little thing I never realised.
Matt Godbolt is a C++ developer living in Chicago. Follow him on Mastodon or Bluesky.