I am finding problems in when I should use *= or be explicit in using my code. I'm trying to do simple integer multiplication and addition in Python. So to take a number, multiply it by 3 and add 1. Is there a specific situation where I should use:
number *= 3 number += 1 Or
number = (number * 3) + 1 Is there a difference between the two, or is this a matter of personal preference?
For simple values like integers, it won't usually make any difference and is a matter of style. For other objects it may make a difference, since + will invoke the __add__ method and += will invoke the __iadd__ method if present, which updates the object itself. Simple example that comes to mind (here demonstrating __ior__):
foo = set('foo') bar = foo bar = bar | set('bar') # vs bar |= set('bar') In this case the difference between | and |= is that the latter also modifies foo, while | does not.
numberis an integer or a float.