[Python-Dev] Re: Sets: elt in dict, lst.include

[Guido van Rossum]

This is all PEP material now.  Tim, do you want to own the PEP?  It
seems just up your alley!

> Cool!  Can we resist adding
> 
>     if key:value in dict
> 
> for "parallelism"?  (I know I can ...)

That's easy to resist because, unlike ``for key:value in dict'', it's
not unambiguous: ``if key:value in dict'' is already legal syntax
currently, with 'key' as the condition and 'value in dict' as the (not
particularly useful) body of the if statement.

> > (And why didn't we think of this before?)
> 
> Best guess:  we were focused exclusively on sequences, and a colon just
> didn't suggest itself in that context.  Second-best guess:  having finally
> approved one of these gimmicks, you finally got desperate enough to make it
> work <wink>.

I'm certainly more comfortable with just ``for key in dict'' than with
the whole slow of extensions using colons.

But, again, that's for the PEP to fight over.

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