What’s New In Python 3.8 – Assignment expressions

There is new syntax := that assigns values to variables as part of a larger expression. It is affectionately known as “the walrus operator” due to its resemblance to the eyes and tusks of a walrus.

In this example, the assignment expression helps avoid calling len() twice:

if (n := len(a)) > 10:
    print(f"List is too long ({n} elements, expected <= 10)")

A similar benefit arises during regular expression matching where match objects are needed twice, once to test whether a match occurred and another to extract a subgroup:

discount = 0.0
if (mo := re.search(r'(\d+)% discount', advertisement)):
    discount = float(mo.group(1)) / 100.0

The operator is also useful with while-loops that compute a value to test loop termination and then need that same value again in the body of the loop:

# Loop over fixed length blocks
while (block := f.read(256)) != '':
    process(block)

Another motivating use case arises in list comprehensions where a value computed in a filtering condition is also needed in the expression body:

[clean_name.title() for name in names
 if (clean_name := normalize('NFC', name)) in allowed_names]

Try to limit use of the walrus operator to clean cases that reduce complexity and improve readability.