[Python-Dev] conditional expressions?

[Skip Montanaro]

    Tim> [Skip Montanaro]
    >> Is the thread in c.l.py on conditional expressions leading in the
    >> direction of actually getting added to the language, or wer Tim's
    >> experiments done just to show it's possible?

    Tim> We (PythonLabs) were wondering whether to reserve any more keywords
    Tim> for 2.2.  "then" was a natural candidate, for this specific use.
    Tim> Guido and I have been playing with it.  If it proves to be a
    Tim> low-hassle, low-impact change that works well, the intent is to get
    Tim> it in for 2.2b1 later this week.  Doesn't look *likely* to me at
    Tim> this point, but don't know.

Regardless whether or not you think this could make it into 2.2b1, I hope if
you proceed it will get a PEP a reasonable amount of time before the CVS
checkin... <0.1 wink>.

It seems downright weird to me that the syntactic baggage necessary to write
a conditional expression is greater the the baggage necessary to write an if
statement (new "then" keyword, parens required for disambiguation).  The
parens function pretty much as "{...}" in C, Java, Perl, etc.  It's a step
away from indentation-based block structure and toward delimiter-based block
structure.  If you add it, I think it will be harder to justify the lack of
delimiter-based block stucture at the statement level.  It will just be one
more argument in the arsenal of people whose knee-jerk reaction to Python's
block structure is to whine about it.

Skip