feature request: ternary fallthroughs

[buran]

Im converting the int only once,

no you converting it twice

val = int(sys.argv[1]) if int(sys.argv[1])

Just an example how your code may look

import sys
from string import ascii_lowercase

def read_file(file="/Users/rexfitzhugh/bin/data/words"):
    print("opening file..")
    with open(file) as f:
        contents = f.read().splitlines()
    print("contents stored...")
    return contents

def chek(word, ch_map, val):
    return sum(ch_map.get(ch, 0) for ch in word.lower()) == val

if __name__ == '__main__':
    try:
        val = int(sys.argv[1])
    except (ValueError, IndexError):
        print("expected a number as an arg")
    else:
        ch_map = {v:k for k, v in enumerate(ascii_lowercase, 1)}
        words = read_file() # instead of reading the whole file in memory you may just iterate over it line by line.
        matches = [word for word in words if check(word, ch_map, val)]