dblank@brynmawr.edu wrote:
I think that we have consensus among (the teachers of edu-sig) that many of us rely on the ease-of-use of the input() and raw_input() functions for one simple reason: input() and raw_input() can be used on day-1 of class, before discussing imports, streams, strings, eval, or functions. Complete replacement solutions require discussions of all of those topics.
I meant to interject a suggestion somewhere, but was only half-tracking the thread. I think a compromise for input() might be possible, that only allows for Python literals, but not expressions. So you could input ``1`` and get the number 1, or ``"1"`` and get the string "1", and allow lists and all that. This actually is more featureful than just eval(raw_input()), which is all input() does now. -- Ian Bicking | ianb@colorstudy.com | http://blog.ianbicking.org