[Skip Montanaro]
Yes, but what if the program containing calls to input() get shipped to someone else's computer? It just seems to me that a) input is almost never what you want to call and that b) it would seem to a naive programmer to be the correct way to ask the user for a line of input.
One of my favorite papers for the upcoming Python Conference describes the use of Python in a CAD system for chip design. The authors had indeed used input(), and didn't know that it eval'ed expressions. The program's users discovered it first, succumbing to a natural urge to type expressions in the input fields. One of the things that made this paper a favorite is that the authors didn't whine about this: to the contrary, they were delighted to get the kudos for Guido's good intuition about what a kick-ass input() function should do. guido-never-drives-before-a-few-stiff-drinks-either<wink>-ly y'rs - tim