Re: [Python-ideas] Making colons optional?
On 5-Feb-09, at 6:10 PM, Ben Finney wrote:
Riobard Zhan yaogzhan@gmail.com writes:
On 5-Feb-09, at 7:31 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
I'm sorry you dislike colons, but I like them.
Yes I agree with you that many people like colons. What bothers me is
that some people dislike them, but not given the choice to avoid
them.
That argument doesn't address the point of the existing syntax. I (and presumably Steven) like the colons in code when I have to read it.
If they are optional, and some significant proportion of coders stop using them to introduce a suite, then they entirely lose their strong association with “here comes a suite” that is the main benefit of having them as complulsory syntax.
Your strong association with "here comes a suite" should come from
indentation, that's how Python works. Or you should fallback to
opening and ending braces like Java/C (or even old school begin-end
keywords) if you fail to do so.
We don't like semicolons in Python, but what would stop a hard-core C users to end every statement with a semicolon? They have the choice.
Laziness (the good kind). Once someone discovers that they don't have to add the semicolons, and it doesn't affect the operation of their program, those semicolons will, I predict, become much less frequent.
"Once someone discovers that they don't have to add the colons, and
it doesn't affect the operation of their program, those colons will, I
predict, become much less frequent. "
Thank God, finally we are on the right track. Making colons optional
is just the first step to kill both semicolons and colons all together.