Let’s say I have a not-so-intuitive if statement in my code, but only if you’re new to the codebase:

def set_markets(markets=None):
    """
    Will accept 'all' as markets to set all markets on.
    For individual markets, pass in a list of ints.
    """
    if markets:
        if type(markets) == list:
            markets = ','.join(map(str, markets))
        self._set_markets(markets)

For those of you wondering:

The existing system I’m interacting with (a database) expects a list of integers from the front end interface. This code does it from the backend, so a list of ints was chosen since it best represents what a user might feed in otherwise.

The markets stuff is handed down from another class, so even though it appears like it’s taking place over 5 lines, it’s more like ~50 lines.

My question is, would you consider this more readable? Why or why not?

def set_markets(markets=None):
    """
    Will accept 'all' as markets to set all markets on.
    For individual markets, pass in a list of ints.
    """
    if markets:
        if type(markets) == list:
            markets = ','.join(map(str, markets))
      # else:
          # markets are set to "all"
        self._set_markets(markets)

EDIT:

This code looks worse than it is because I left off a detail: if None is fed in for markets (the default parameter), then it will not modify the markets settings the database.

Here’s what I have now:

    if markets is not None:
        if isinstance(markets, list):
            markets = ','.join(map(str, markets))
        else:
            markets = 'all'
        self._set_new_header_markets(markets)