[Python-3000] Use of bracketing characters: (), {}, []

[Guido van Rossum]

On 5/3/06, Edward C. Jones <edcjones at comcast.net> wrote:
> There is a current thread on notations for sets and dicts. A more
> general question is: How should the precious pairs of bracketing
> characters,(), {}, and [] be used? Currently, parentheses are used for
> grouping, function calls and tuples. Curly brackets are used for
> dictionaries and, perhaps in the future, for sets. Square brackets are
> used for subscripts and dictionaries.
>
> Are these bracketing pairs used in too many ways? Does the language need
> more bracketing pairs, perhaps "<<<", ">>>"? Any way to get rid of the
> horrible ancient wart of "(a,)" for a tuple of length one?

I'd like to discourage this thread. It seems an invitation to millions
of proposals and endless discussions. It also goes against the set
goal for Py3k to fix the early design bugs. Choosing only a limited
set of delimiters, used in ways similar to English or other mainstream
programming languages, was quite a conscious choice, and I don't
consider it a design mistake.

--
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)