Re: [Matplotlib-users] Re: matplotlib.mlab.find() not quite like?Matlab"s

[Jean-Michel P. <jea...@ir...>]

jk...@ik... wrote:
> Arguably Matlab has the elegant Lisp-like feature lacking in Python of
> multiple return values. In Lisp you can write
> 
>   (setq x (floor 3.14))
> 
> to set the value of x to 3, or
> 
>   (multiple-value-setq (x y) (floor 3.14))
> 
> to set the value of x to 3 and the value of y to 0.14. Note how it is
> left up to the caller of the FLOOR function whether to capture just
> the first returned value or both of them. This is paralleled by
> Matlab's
> 
>   x = some_function(a,b,c)
>   [x,y] = some_function(a,b,c)
> 
> where the caller decides how many values will be returned.

Note that you can simply "emulate" this missing Python feature by 
appending indexes after your function call:

	x = some_function(a,b,c)[0]
	x, y = some_function(a,b,c)[:2]
	and so on...

Naturally this does not save computation as nargout could do, but is 
this really an issue? IMHO this is generally not.

JM. Philippe