On Sun, Oct 11, 2020 at 01:04:46PM -0400, Wes Turner wrote:
(I must have missed the 'try' suffix)
Indeed. And this is, in my opinion, a major problem with the suggestion. It obfuscates the code, hiding the fact that a new try block has been started. To be fair to the proposal, it does save a line and an indent level; saving lines is not much gain, since lines are cheap, but saving an indent is a small gain, since horizontal space is at a premium. So the proposal does have a small gain. A very small one. But the cost is to decrease readability and increase the likelihood of misreading the code, as Wes did. The analogy with `elif` is not a good one. `elif` is a distinct keyword, and it is at the start of the line: if condition elif condition whereas this proposal for an "excepttry" cuts the keyword in half, sticking a condition (the exception to catch) in between: try: ... except Exception try: We don't spell `elif` like this: if condition: else condition if: but that's what this proposal suggests for "excepttry". Another problem is the potential ambiguity: # Version 1 try: ... except A: try: ... except B: ... except C: ... # Version 2 try: ... except A: try: ... except B: ... except C: ... Using the proposed syntax, both of these would be written as: try: ... except A try: ... except B: ... except C: ... with no way of telling whether the "except B" goes with the outer try or the inner try. -- Steve