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[Python-ideas] An Alternate Suite Delineation Syntax For Python? (was Re: [Python-Dev] [PATCH] Adding braces to __future__)

Bruce Leban bruce at leapyear.org
Mon Dec 12 07:09:06 CET 2011 
On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 9:21 PM, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz>wrote:

>  Mike Meyer wrote:
>>
>>  With significant whitespace, you have to keep explicit track of the
>>> current nesting level in order to generate the appropriate
>>> indent. With real delimiters, you can drop that.
>>>
>>
> Yes, but with an appropriate design you can arrange for that to
> be done in only *one* place. There's no need for every method
> that generates code to know about indentation levels.
>

I've written this code (for HTML) and it's not only straightforward, it
makes the code easier to write and more robust. And you can make the
closing automatic with a context manager. Here's how you might write some
HTML:

    with html_tag('table'):
        with html_tag('tr'):
            for x in data:
                with html_tag('td'):
                     # do stuff with x

On the other hand, this might not help with template languages as Nick
points out:

On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 2:30 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:

> <% if danger_level > 3 {: %>
>  <div class="alert"><% if danger_level == 5 {: %>EXTREME <% :}
> %>DANGER ALERT!</div>
>
> <% elif danger_level > 0 {: %>
>  <div>Some chance of danger</div>
>
> <% else {: %>
>  <div>No danger</div>
>
> <% :} %>
>
> <% for a in ['cat', 'dog', 'rabbit'] {: %>
>  <h2><%= a %></h2>
>  <p><%= describe_animal(a) %></p>
>
> <% :} %>


 While I thought his example was compelling at first, after thinking it
through I realized that any existing template language that generates
Python has to be aware of indentation and it's going to have to modify the
indentation of the included Python code. So it would need to either read
the indentation or read the {: and :} tokens. So what if we think in terms
of modifying the template language instead of Python? In the code below,
I've added two extra tokens to the template language: %{> which increases
the indentation and <}% which decreases it. All other leading spaces would
be stripped. Here's that example rewritten:

<% if danger_level > 3: %{>
 <div class="alert"><% if danger_level == 5: %{>EXTREME <}%
%>DANGER ALERT!</div>

<% elif danger_level > 0: %{>
 <div>Some chance of danger</div>

<% else: %{>
 <div>No danger</div>

<}%>

<% for a in ['cat', 'dog', 'rabbit']: %{>
 <h2><%= a %></h2>
 <p><%= describe_animal(a) %></p>

<}%>

This isn't a perfect design. In particular %{> wouldn't be necessary if the
template language parses the embedded code, but it's sufficient to
illustrate the point.

--- Bruce
Follow me: http://www.twitter.com/Vroo http://www.vroospeak.com
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