[Python-Dev] I'd like list.pop to accept an optional second

[Fred L. Drake]

Skip Montanaro writes:
 > Why not go all the way to Perl with
 > 
 >     top = list.pop() unless IndexError


  Trying to kill me, Skip?  ;-)
  Actually, the semantics are different.  If we interpret that using
the Perl semantics for "unless", don't we have the same thing as:

	if not IndexError:
	    top = list.pop()

  Since IndexError will normally be a non-empty string or a class,
this is pretty much:

	if 0:
	    top = list.pop()

which certainly isn't quite as interesting.  ;-)


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake@acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives