Re: [pygame] Name self not defined

[Bill Coderre <bcbc@xxxxxxx>]

On Jan 28, 2009, at 4:06 PM, James Paige wrote:
> The "or" operator is what they call a "short circuiting" operator. If
> the first part is True then the second part is never evaluated. If the
> first part is False, then the second part is returned.


Ah, the "or" idiom. Read it as "or else." I learned of this as a perl- 
ism of particular delight:
> open(FILE) or die "Can't open the file!";


perl also has inverted tests:
> die "The file is not there!" unless open(FILE);


Not trying to start LANGUAGE WARS here, just pointing out that when  
the idioms line up with common natural-language idioms, it's  
peculiarly satisfying.

Interestingly, one rarely sees people use "and" as an idiom. It will  
execute starting with the left-most statement, and keep going until  
one of them fails, then stop, executing nothing further. So you could  
read it as "and then"