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For review: PEP 308 - If-then-else expression

James J. Besemer jb at cascade-sys.com
Sun Feb 9 05:34:16 EST 2003 
Roy Smith wrote:

> I guess deep down, my real objection to all this is that it blurs the 
> line between statements and expressions.  In some languages (lisp, for 
> example) there is no such distinction, and everything returns a value.  
> But in Python, there is a distinction.  So is "if" a statement or an 
> expression?  With this PEP, the answer becomes, "it depends", which I 
> think is a bad answer.

"if" is a keyword.  So is "for".  Neither is a "statement" in and of 
themselves.

Even without PEP308 they are presently used both to start a statement and as 
elements within an expression.  Thus the precise meaning of any particular 
keyword (although very similar in  all cases) can only be determined by 
examining the surrounding context.

Regards

--jb

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