Tue Jul 3 10:14:17 CEST 2007, Guido van Rossum wrote:
On 6/30/07, Matt Chisholm <matt-python at theory.org> wrote:
I've created and submitted a new PEP proposing support for labels in Python's break and continue statements. Georg Brandl has graciously added it to the PEP list as PEP 3136:
I think this is a good summary of various proposals that have been floated in the past, plus some new ones. As a PEP, it falls short because it doesn't pick a solution but merely offers a large menu of possible options. Also, there is nothing about implementation yet.
However, I'm rejecting it on the basis that code so complicated to require this feature is very rare. In most cases there are existing work-arounds that produce clean code, for example using 'return'.
I agree that this feature will only serve as a quick hack and in many cases it would be misused and ugly code will be the result. However, it seems that there are some shortcuts that have sneaked into python (I am a fairly new Python programmer, only since late 2.4, so don't shoot me). The specific one of which I speak about is: while_stmt ::= "while" expression ":" suite ["else" ":" suite] for_stmt ::= "for" target_list "in" expression_list ":" suite ["else" ":" suite] try1_stmt ::= "try" ":" suite ("except" [expression ["as" target]] ":" suite)+ ["else" ":" suite] ["finally" ":" suite] All these else's seem like shortcuts to me. I did find a use for them, once I found out they existed, but I get butterflies whenever I do. -- Hatem Nassrat