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pythonpep8

Using pass on a non necessary else statement

Based on PEP8 documentation, I was not able to find any reference regarding if I should use pass for aesthetic reasons on code. Based on the example below, should I keep those else or can I erase them? Until now, the main reason I'm keeping it is based on the mantra "Explicit is better than implicit."

if fields:
    for i in foo:
        if i == 'something':
            print "something"
        else:
            pass
else:
    pass
Solution

  • Yes, you can/should remove them because they do nothing.

    The Python community teaches "explicit is better than implicit" as long as the explicit code does something useful. Those else: pass's however contribute nothing positive to the code. Instead, all they do is pointlessly consume two lines each.