I somewhat tongue-in-cheekly propose to make the first seven most common English words all integral part of the Python language (three already are): source: http://www.world-english.org/english500.htm 1 the: Singletons: the class Logger: # ... 2 of inheritance: class Square of Shape:: # pass 3 to printing: print('hello world') to sys.stdout 4 and already a keyword 5 a introspection: if object is a dict: # ... 6 in already a keyword 7 is already a keyword Then it gets tougher: 8 it 9 you 10 that Top 500 words that are already keywords/builtins/conventions in Python: 27 or 49 each 55 if 189 try 198 self 251 open 254 next Top 500 words that are already keywords in some languages: 25 this 52 do 68 long Top 500 words that should NEVER be keywords: 78 could 81 did 180 men 252 seem 435 oh Words that seem like they'd be part of a programming language, but maybe a bad idea: 74 has 82 my 120 every 148 too ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for a deal? Find great prices on flights and hotels with Yahoo! FareChase. http://farechase.yahoo.com/
Top 500 words that are already keywords/builtins/conventions in Python:
27 or 49 each 55 if 189 try 198 self 251 open 254 next
Also: 13 for 16 with 17 as 26 from -- EduardoOPadoan (eopadoan->altavix::com) Bookmarks: http://del.icio.us/edcrypt
--- "Fred L. Drake, Jr." <fdrake@acm.org> wrote:
Words that seem like they'd be part of a
On Tuesday 19 June 2007, Steve Howell wrote: programming
language, but maybe a bad idea: ... 82 my
Perl uses this one. ;-)
Yes indeed! It uses "our" as well: http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/our.html I don't remember whether Perl has "theirs," "yours," "his," "hers," etc. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Expecting? Get great news right away with email Auto-Check. Try the Yahoo! Mail Beta. http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/newmail_tools.html
On Tuesday 19 June 2007, Steve Howell wrote:
Yes indeed! It uses "our" as well:
Eeeewww....
I don't remember whether Perl has "theirs," "yours," "his," "hers," etc.
I don't even want to know.... -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at acm.org>
On 19 Jun 2007, at 21.35, Steve Howell wrote:
Top 500 words that should NEVER be keywords:
78 could 81 did 180 men 252 seem 435 oh
I'm having fun thinking about the possibilities of these. "could" could be a keyword if we had a magical Nondeterministic Turing Machine. You could have a "could" block (with a suite) followed by at least one (but unlimited) "else" blocks. And when that code was encountered, it would automatically choose the right one. :P
Steve Howell schrieb:
I somewhat tongue-in-cheekly propose to make the first seven most common English words all integral part of the Python language (three already are):
source: http://www.world-english.org/english500.htm
1 the: Singletons:
the class Logger: # ...
2 of inheritance:
class Square of Shape:: # pass
3 to printing:
print('hello world') to sys.stdout
4 and already a keyword
5 a introspection:
if object is a dict: # ...
is "a" the keyword or is it "is a"?
6 in already a keyword
7 is already a keyword
Then it gets tougher:
8 it 9 you 10 that
Top 500 words that are already keywords/builtins/conventions in Python:
27 or 49 each
each is a keyword? I don't think so. else is a keyword.
55 if 189 try 198 self
self is not a keyword, its a convention.
251 open
open is not a keyword, its a other name for the class "file".
254 next
next is not a keyword. its the name of a method of an iterator. there are a lot of more methods in python which are single words. why don't list them, too? ;)
Top 500 words that are already keywords in some languages:
25 this 52 do 68 long
Top 500 words that should NEVER be keywords:
78 could 81 did 180 men 252 seem 435 oh
Words that seem like they'd be part of a programming language, but maybe a bad idea:
74 has 82 my 120 every 148 too
--- Mathias Panzenböck <grosser.meister.morti@gmx.net> wrote:
Top 500 words that are already keywords/builtins/conventions in Python:
27 or 49 each
each is a keyword? I don't think so. else is a keyword.
I take back "each."
55 if 189 try 198 self
self is not a keyword, its a convention.
You're not reading very carefully. Scroll up, I said "keywords/builtins/conventions."
next is not a keyword. its the name of a method of an iterator. there are a lot of more methods in python which are single words. why don't list them, too? ;)
63 write 102 new 163 read 245 close Having listed those, it's actually kind of striking how few "common" English words have general enough meaning to be "common" programming words. http://www.world-english.org/english500.htm ____________________________________________________________________________________ Finding fabulous fares is fun. Let Yahoo! FareChase search your favorite travel sites to find flight and hotel bargains. http://farechase.yahoo.com/promo-generic-14795097
Mathias Panzenböck wrote:
is "a" the keyword or is it "is a"?
To be practical, it would have to be a pseudo-keyword that was only recognised after "is". But it would be nicely perverse to make it a true keyword. :-) BTW, something like this actually happens in ALAN (a language for writing interactive fiction, aka adventure games) where you can't use "a" as part of the player-usable name of an object, because the command parser treats it as an indefinite article. So your courtroom drama can't have an object that the player refers to as "Exhibit A". "Exhibit B" is fine, though. :-) (This was true in Alan 2 at least -- Alan 3 might have improved matters.) -- Greg
--- Greg Ewing <greg.ewing@canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
Mathias Panzenböck wrote:
is "a" the keyword or is it "is a"?
To be practical, it would have to be a pseudo-keyword that was only recognised after "is".
But it would be nicely perverse to make it a true keyword. :-)
A similarly perverse thought is to make "um" a keyword and allow it, um, almost anywhere it could possibly make sense. Which I think is almost everywhere. If the Python interpreter failed on a line with "um" in it, perhaps it would be extra aggressive in providing traceback information. :) ____________________________________________________________________________________ Choose the right car based on your needs. Check out Yahoo! Autos new Car Finder tool. http://autos.yahoo.com/carfinder/
On Thu, 21 Jun 2007, Steve Howell wrote:
A similarly perverse thought is to make "um" a keyword and allow it, um, almost anywhere it could possibly make sense. Which I think is almost everywhere.
I propose we make "um" a keyword that is synonymous with \-NEWLINE to indicate that an incomplete statement is being continued.
On 6/19/07, Steve Howell <showell30@yahoo.com> wrote:
I somewhat tongue-in-cheekly propose to make the first seven most common English words all integral part of the Python language (three already are):
[...]
This made me smile. Incidentally, Inform 7 has noun phrases where the words {a, an, the, any, all, most, least} have meanings; it can also be made to understand adjectives, nouns, and prepositions. So you can say things like: let x = the most annoying person in the location now all programmers are enlightened Not appropriate for Python, though. Inform 7: http://inform-fiction.org/I7/Inform%207.html Me, previously, on noun phrases: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/6bdc4b103cafe98f -j
Jason Orendorff wrote:
Incidentally, Inform 7 has noun phrases where the words {a, an, the, any, all, most, least} have meanings;
Although it seems that I7 doesn't really have any reserved words in the usual sense. Whether a given word has a special meaning seems to he highly context-dependent, which makes forming a mental model of the grammar rather challenging... -- Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, +--------------------------------------+ University of Canterbury, | Carpe post meridiem! | Christchurch, New Zealand | (I'm not a morning person.) | greg.ewing@canterbury.ac.nz +--------------------------------------+
--- Jason Orendorff <jason.orendorff@gmail.com> wrote:
Me, previously, on noun phrases:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/6bdc4b103cafe98f
In that post you said: ''' Noun phrases are the product of a linguistic evolution that was basically finished thousands of years before we were born. The syntax isn't merely interesting. It's the best concrete syntax for the abstract concept it represents. Period. You're not going to beat it. (Well, arguably. My assumption here is that evolution is smarter than engineers, which I think ought not be controversial.) ''' Yes indeed. I was experiencing a similar thought process as I was writing my post. Although you pick out noun phrases as a sort of inevitable evolutionary outcome of human speech optimized on some valid dimension, I was picking up on a different figure of speech, the article. It's amazing how uncommon "the" and "a" are in mainstream programming languages. I'm not saying they should be (although I think there's some argument to using "the" for singletons), I just find it curious that they shouldn't be, and there's been enough evolution on programming languages (albeit a small amount of time compared to natural languages) to suggest that articles (as builtins) are just somehow *wrong* in programming languages. Yet they're so incredible popular in "natural" languages. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Got a little couch potato? Check out fun summer activities for kids. http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=oni_on_mail&p=summer+activities+for+kids&cs=bz
On Thu, June 21, 2007 10:36 am, Steve Howell wrote: [...]
It's amazing how uncommon "the" and "a" are in mainstream programming languages. I'm not saying they should be (although I think there's some argument to using "the" for singletons), I just find it curious that they shouldn't be, and there's been enough evolution on programming languages (albeit a small amount of time compared to natural languages) to suggest that articles (as builtins) are just somehow *wrong* in programming languages. Yet they're so incredible popular in "natural" languages.
from random import randrange ABIGNUMBER = 100000 # or should it be THEBIGNUMBER? class ArticleError(Exception): pass def the(s): try: s = iter(s) ret = s.next() for el in s: raise ArticleError return ret except (StopIteration, TypeError): raise ArticleError("'the' argument must be a singleton iterable") def a(s): try: s = iter(s) for i, el in enumerate(s): if not randrange(i+1): ret = el if i == ABIGNUMBER: return ret return ret except (NameError, TypeError): raise ArticleError("'a' argument must be a non-empty iterable") an = a # for convenience :) --------------------- How to use 'a(n)' and 'the' -------
a ('python') 'y' a ('python') 'n' an (x for x in range(10) if x+x==x*x) 0 an (x for x in range(10) if x+x==x*x) 0 an (x for x in range(10) if x+x==x*x) 2 the (x for x in range(10) if x+x==x*x) Traceback (most recent call last): ... __main__.ArticleError: 'the' argument must be a singleton iterable the (x for x in range(1, 10) if x+x==x*x) 2 from itertools import count a (count()) 81294 a (count()) 41746 from itertools import repeat a (repeat('spam')) 'spam'
-- Arnaud
--- Arnaud Delobelle <arno@marooned.org.uk> wrote:
from random import randrange
ABIGNUMBER = 100000 # or should it be THEBIGNUMBER?
class ArticleError(Exception): pass
def the(s): try: s = iter(s) ret = s.next() for el in s: raise ArticleError return ret except (StopIteration, TypeError): raise ArticleError("'the' argument must be a singleton iterable")
def a(s): try: s = iter(s) for i, el in enumerate(s): if not randrange(i+1): ret = el if i == ABIGNUMBER: return ret return ret except (NameError, TypeError): raise ArticleError("'a' argument must be a non-empty iterable")
Good stuff, I like it. Not sure I would actually use it, but it's a good brainstorm... :)
an = a # for convenience :)
Of course! ____________________________________________________________________________________ Boardwalk for $500? In 2007? Ha! Play Monopoly Here and Now (it's updated for today's economy) at Yahoo! Games. http://get.games.yahoo.com/proddesc?gamekey=monopolyherenow
Steve Howell wrote:
suggest that articles (as builtins) are just somehow *wrong* in programming languages. Yet they're so incredible popular in "natural" languages.
Popularity of a given feature in natural languages doesn't necessarily imply optimality -- it could just be a result of those languages having a common ancestor. Linguists have concluded that most of the languages in use today, even ones that seem very different, can be traced back to a single ancestral language. -- Greg
--- Greg Ewing <greg.ewing@canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
suggest that articles (as builtins) are just somehow *wrong* in programming languages. Yet
Steve Howell wrote: they're
so incredible popular in "natural" languages.
Popularity of a given feature in natural languages doesn't necessarily imply optimality -- it could just be a result of those languages having a common ancestor.
Sure, but languages do evolve. Two examples: 1) The more popular words tend to get shortened over time. 2) Languages tend to appropriate only the most expressive words or phrases from other languages.
Linguists have concluded that most of the languages in use today, even ones that seem very different, can be traced back to a single ancestral language.
Same for programming languages to a certain degree. For example, Python has some stuff from C that would arguably not be there if it had been designed in a vacuum, but it traces some of its roots to C. ____________________________________________________________________________________Ready for the edge of your seat? Check out tonight's top picks on Yahoo! TV. http://tv.yahoo.com/
participants (9)
-
Adam Atlas -
Arnaud Delobelle -
Eduardo "EdCrypt" O. Padoan -
Fred L. Drake, Jr. -
Greg Ewing -
Jason Orendorff -
Mathias Panzenböck -
Steve Howell -
Terry Carroll