[Python-3000] PEP 3125 -- a modest proposal

[Raymond Hettinger]

[Andrew Koenig]
> It has occurred to me that as Python stands today, an indent always begins
> with a colon.  So in principle, we could define anything that looks like an
> indent but doesn't begin with a colon as a continuation.  So the idea would
> be that you can continue a statement onto as many lines as you wish,

Too dangerous.  The most common Python syntax error (by far, even for
experienced users) is omission of a colon.  If the missing colon starts
to have its own special meaning, that would not be a good thing.

If you're in the mood to propose something radical, how about dropping
the colon altogether, leaving indention as the sure reliable cue and 
cleaning-up the appearance of code in a new world where colons
are also being used for annotation as well as slicing:

   def f(x: xtype, y: type)
        result = []
        for i, elem in enumerate(x)
             if elem < 0
                  result.append(y[:i])
             else
                  result.append(y[i:])
        return result

It looks very clean to my eyes.


Raymond