Just to wrap up this thread (as if): a couple of people have pointed out that two of the suggestions that came up w.r.t. Python syntax are really about eliminating need for assignment-as-an-operator: do: line = readline() while line: print line gets rid of a need for: while (line = readline()): print line without the confusing-for-newcomers: while 1: line = readline() if not line: break print line and the generalized case statement: if x is: expr1, expr2: x is the result of expr1 or expr2 expr3: x is the result of expr3 else: x is undefined or None does: if ((x = expr1) or (x = expr2)): code using x elif x = expr3: code using x else: code (Don't know what other people's experience is, but this comes up a lot in my code when I'm doing Awk-style coding, i.e. when RE matching drives execution.) Looking through some C++ code I wrote last year, these two cases (loop control and capturing successful conditions) account for at least three quarters of my uses of assignment-as-operator. My thanks to people for pointing this out, Greg