Python Forum

This kind of "if clause" works ok.

I'm just wondering if (no pun intended) this is good practice when writing Python.

sign = '-' if n < 0 else ''

Normally, I would start with "if", but the above is actually more human readable and succinct.

if n < 0:
    sign = '-'
else:
    sign = ''

It is excellent practice to use the conditional operator. It was introduced in Python 2.5, because people complained that Python lacked a ternary operator such as C's x = a ? b : c. Before that, people would sometimes use ersatz expressions such as

sign = ('', '-')[n < 0]