El mié, 20-07-2005 a las 13:26 +1000, Anthony Baxter escribió:

On Wednesday 20 July 2005 13:13, Martin Blais wrote:

...

it got me wondering, wouldn't it be nice if

while: ...

behaved as:

while True: ...

-1

I don't expect if: or for: to mean anything, so why should while: ? I don't see any advantages to it (saving 5 keypresses? please...)

maybe a new idiom forever: ... is in order? (perhaps it would be better to call it "always:" or "until_break") (this message is a bit tongue-in-cheek) =)

Anthony

-- Manuel Amador http://www.amautacorp.com/ +593 (4) 220-7010

On 7/20/05, Facundo Batista wrote:

On 7/20/05, Martin Blais wrote:

...

it got me wondering, wouldn't it be nice if

while: ...

behaved as:

while True:

-1

Explicit is better than implicit.

Well, maybe you're reading a bit too litterally into that statement. To me the expression is very explicitly absent :-) More seriously, reading into these rules too literally leads to funny places: I could ask why at the end of functions there is an implicit "return None" (I'm not expecting an answer). Explicit better than implicit? The Rule of Least Surprise says to me that "while:" would do the least unexpected thing. There are only two possibilities: the test is implicitly false, in which case "while:" would make no sense (i.e. the block would be ignored). Therefore the other only sensible case is that the test is implicitly true, which can be useful (and also happens to be a very common idiom). It's not so much about saving typing characters: it's just low-hanging fruit that simplifies the language a little bit (well, "simplify" is arguable though, if you consider the grammar it makes it a tiny bit more complex, but that is usually not the programmer's point-of-view). Bah, whatever, +0 cheers,

В Срд, 20/07/2005 в 21:58 -0300, Facundo Batista пишет:

On 7/20/05, Martin Blais wrote:

...

Well, maybe you're reading a bit too litterally into that statement. To me the expression is very explicitly absent :-) More seriously, reading into these rules too literally leads to funny places: I could ask why at the end of functions there is an implicit "return None" (I'm not expecting an answer). Explicit better than implicit?

See your point.

But, for me (spanish speaker), if I read a ``while:``, I think, "while what?".

The same here, so -1 for while: Ruslan