Groovy has a very handy operator ?.. This checks if the object is not null and, if it is not, accesses a method or a property. Can I do the same thing in Python?
The closest I have found is the ternary conditional operator. Right now I am doing
l = u.find('loc')
l = l.string if l else None
whereas it would be nice to write
l = u.find('loc')?.string
Update: in addition to getattr mentioned below, I found a relatively nice way to do it with a list:
[x.string if x else None for x in [u.find('loc'), u.find('priority'), ...]]
Another alternative, if you want to exclude None:
[x.string for x in [u.find('loc'), u.find('priority'), ...] if x]
You could write something like this
L = L and L.string
Important to note that as in your ternary example, this will do the "else" part for any "Falsy" value of L
If you need to check specifically for None, it's clearer to write
if L is not None:
L = L.string
or for the any "Falsy" version
if L:
L = L.string
I think using getattr is kind of awkward for this too
L = getattr(L, 'string', None)