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[Python-Dev] Re: accumulator display syntax

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Mon Oct 20 12:40:04 EDT 2003 
> Did I miss April 1st? We seem to be discussing the merits of
> 
>     f of arg
> 
> as an alternative form of
> 
>    f(arg)
> 
> While I'm sure Cobol had some good points, I don't believe that this was one
> of them...
> 
> If there is any merit to this proposal, it's very rapidly being lost in
> examples of rewriting things which are simple function calls.

Amen.  *If* we were to introduce 'of' as an operator, at least it
should introduce some as-yet-unsupported parameter passing semantics,
like call-by-name. :-)

And in fact, I think that

  sum(x for x in range(10))

reads *better* than

  sum of x for x in range(10)

and certainly better than

  sum of x for x in range of 10

because when you squint, it just becomes a series of undistinguished
words, like

  xxx xx x xxx x xx xxxxx xx xx

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
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