We have a lot of these. Some of them are harmless, if unidiomatic, such
as `if (condition)`, others are potentially dangerous `assert(...)`, as
`assert(condtion)` works as expected, but `assert(condition, message)`
will result in an assertion that never triggers, as what you're actually
asserting is `bool(tuple[2])`, which will always be true.
Meson has a common pattern of using 'if len(foo) == 0:' or
'if len(foo) != 0:', however, this is a common anti-pattern in python.
Instead tests for emptiness/non-emptiness should be done with a simple
'if foo:' or 'if not foo:'
Consider the following:
>>> import timeit
>>> timeit.timeit('if len([]) == 0: pass')
0.10730923599840025
>>> timeit.timeit('if not []: pass')
0.030033907998586074
>>> timeit.timeit('if len(['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']) == 0: pass')
0.1154778649979562
>>> timeit.timeit("if not ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']: pass")
0.08259823200205574
>>> timeit.timeit('if len("") == 0: pass')
0.089759664999292
>>> timeit.timeit('if not "": pass')
0.02340641999762738
>>> timeit.timeit('if len("foo") == 0: pass')
0.08848102600313723
>>> timeit.timeit('if not "foo": pass')
0.04032287199879647
And for the one additional case of 'if len(foo.strip()) == 0', which can
be replaced with 'if not foo.isspace()'
>>> timeit.timeit('if len(" ".strip()) == 0: pass')
0.15294511600222904
>>> timeit.timeit('if " ".isspace(): pass')
0.09413968399894657
>>> timeit.timeit('if len(" abc".strip()) == 0: pass')
0.2023209120015963
>>> timeit.timeit('if " abc".isspace(): pass')
0.09571301700270851
In other words, it's always a win to not use len(), when you don't
actually want to check the length.
Jussi Pakkanen
Dylan Baker
Eli Schwartz
Kyle Stone
Michael Brockus
Andrei Antonov
Aleksey Filippov
Luke Shumaker
Elliott Sales de Andrade