19 Sweet Python Syntax Sugar for Improving Your Coding Experience
<p>Making a function work is one thing.</p>
<p>Implementing it with precise and elegant code is another.</p>
<p>As the Zen of Python mentioned, “beautiful is better than ugly.” A good programming language like Python will always provide appropriate syntax sugar to help developers write elegant code easily.</p>
<p>This article highlights 19 crucial syntax sugar in Python. The journey to mastery involves understanding and utilizing them skillfully.</p>
<p>Talk is cheap, let’s see the code.</p>
<h1>1. Union Operators: The Most Elegant Way To Merge Python Dictionaries</h1>
<p>There are many approaches to merging multiple dictionaries in Python, but none of them can be described as elegant until Python 3.9 was released.</p>
<p>For example, how can we merge the following three dictionaries before Python 3.9?</p>
<p>One of the methods is using for loops:</p>
<pre>
cities_us = {'New York City': 'US', 'Los Angeles': 'US'}
cities_uk = {'London': 'UK', 'Birmingham': 'UK'}
cities_jp = {'Tokyo': 'JP'}
cities = {}
for city_dict in [cities_us, cities_uk, cities_jp]:
for city, country in city_dict.items():
cities[city] = country
print(cities)
# {'New York City': 'US', 'Los Angeles': 'US', 'London': 'UK', 'Birmingham': 'UK', 'Tokyo': 'JP'}</pre>
<p>It’s decent, but far from elegant and Pythonic.</p>
<p>Python 3.9 introduced the union operators, a syntax sugar that has made merging tasks super straightforward:</p>