[Python-3000] PEP 30XZ: Simplified Parsing

[Guido van Rossum]

On 4/30/07, Giovanni Bajo <rasky at develer.com> wrote:
> I was in favor of one of the alternatives that were proposed here:

Was? Are you no longer in favor of it? (Then I should shut up. :-)

> line continuation through indentation:
>
>     a = 123 *
>         (12 + 4) / 8
>
>     assert True,
>          "No goofy paren" +
>          ", dude"
>
> ... and don't tell me that you need a character there because using just
> indentation is hard to read :)
>
> Even if you don't want to champion this solution in your PEP, you should at
> least list it among the alternatives.

Then please add my -1 to it: I don't think this is feasible. It would
require allowing matching INDENT and DEDENT tokens *anywhere* in the
grammar; *or* you would have to limit where in the grammar you allow
the indent to occur (e.g. after '*' but not before it; after the ','
but not before it). It seems a really big departure from the current
Python parsing methodology.

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