On Wed, Aug 26, 2015 at 12:53:47PM -0700, Mike Miller wrote:
Hold on, it took f'' strings a while to grow on you, give it a few minutes. ;)
I'd like Python to be competitive with other (shell) scripting languages,
Why? If you want a shell language, there are many existing shell languages that are far more compact/terse/unreadable/convenient/"easy to use (wrongly)" than Python will ever be, even with f-strings. Even Perl is not a shell language. Python already makes a good scripting language. It just requires more typing and more thought, which encourages writing correct code rather than "easy to type" code which may not be correct. Can we get away from the harmful meme that being "easier" is necessarily always better? That way of thinking leads to PHP.
and appeals to purity stand in the way of that. Sometimes practical is just darn useful.
[snark] We've thrown away the rest of the Zen with these f-strings, so why not throw away that one too? *fractional-wink* I don't think there is any "practical beats purity" argument to be made here. It's not like it is hard to get access to environment variables.
We've already acquiesced to arbitrary expressions, so this is a small further step, icing on the cake, no? I believe Guido mentioned something about "half-measures" in one of his messages.
Perhaps less icing on the cake and more the straw that breaks the camel's back? -- Steve