On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 1:30 AM, Glenn Linderman <v+python@g.nevcal.com> wrote:

    value = expr except (
        Exception1: default1,
        Exception2: default2,
        Exception3: default3,
   )

except that to get the pairing aspect of some parameters for a function call, you use = instead of :, and instead of a named function it has an expression and a keyword.

[ Cue people suggesting the use of '=' or '=>' or '->' instead of ':' ]

Not being an expert parser generator, I don't know if the () could
    be made optional if there is only one exception-list, but that would
    also remove one of the benefits some folks might perceive with using
    this syntax, and would also make the analogy with function call
    syntax a little less comparable.

I believe it's possible, but it's probably tricky: the parser has to consider two or three cases:

1. expr1 except expr2: expr4

2. expr1 except (expr2: expr4)

3. expr1 except (expr2, expr3): expr4

4. expr1 except ((expr2, expr3): expr4)

(for simplicity I use 'expr' here, which is entirely the wrong thing to do in terms of CPython's grammar: there's different types of expressions for different situations. #2 and #4 are actually automatically derived from #1 and #3 by 'expr' including tuples and parenthesized expressions.) CPython's parser is a LL(1) parser, which means it can look ahead 1 character to choose between alternatives (and that's not going to change, Guido likes it this way -- and so I do, personally :). Looking at #2 and #3 you can't tell which alternative to use until you see the ':' or ',' after 'expr2', which is too late. The only way to handle that, I think, is to include all possible alternatives in the grammar for the 'except' statement, duplicating logic and definitions from a lot of places. We already do this kind of thing to deal with other potentially-ambiguous situations (to handle dicts and sets and dict comprehensions and set comprehensions, for example) but this would be even more duplication.

It would be easier if we weren't talking about '(' or any other token that can be part of a normal expression ;-P

[ Cue people suggesting the use of 'expr1 except < expr2: expr4 >'... ]

--
Thomas Wouters <thomas@python.org>

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