Home Original page

syntax

Moshe Zadka moshez at server.python.net
Fri Jul 30 13:15:25 EDT 1999 
On Fri, 30 Jul 1999, Fredrik Lundh wrote:

[Xavier Bec asks why colons are necessary after if, for or while]

[Fredrik Lundh answers]
> readability.  think about it for a while, and then read:
> http://www.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=171314015

In which the Guido writes
...
> Python inherits this feature from ABC.  The designers
> of ABC spent quite some time experimenting with language variants and
> showed them to beginning users (with no programming experience).  They
> initially had indentation for block structure, but not the colon.
> Their experience was that first-time users had some trouble
> understanding that the indented block was "subordinate" to the if- or
> for-statement preceding it.
...

How about the same solution as in "pindent"? I.e., have a preprocessor
which automatically adds the colons. While it's at it, it can
automatically correct '=' to '==' and vice versa, so we can forget all
the crutches and just write code <0.9 wink>

heck-why-not-let-it-write-the-damn-code-ly y'rs, Z.
More information about the Python-list mailing list