[Python-Dev] PEP 3103: A Switch/Case Statement

[Guido van Rossum]

On 6/27/06, Robin Bryce <robinbryce at gmail.com> wrote:
> > PEP 3103, When to Freeze the Dispatch Dict/Option 1
>
> 2 things resonated with me for Raymond's proposal and the follow up:
>
> - It seemed agnostic to almost all of the independently contentious issues.

Except for the need to use named constants.

> - "is defined tightly enough to allow room for growth and elaboration over
> time" [Raymond]. In particular it left room for
> const/static/only/cached/etc to come along later.
>
> I think its worth acknowledging this in the PEP.

Search for Raymond's name. It's there.

> Is nothing better than something in this case ? I don't know.
>
> > I think we need a PEP for const/static/only/cached/precomputed or
> > whatever people like to call it.
> >
> > Once we have (say) static, I think making the case expressions static
> > by default would still cover all useful cases, and would allow us to
> > diagnose duplicate cases reliably (which the if/elif chain semantics
> > don't allow IIUC).
>
> If the expectation is that static/const will evolve as a sibling pep,
> does this not make Raymond's suggestion any more appealing, even a
> little ?

No, then School Ia becomes more appealing. Raymond's proposal is
unpythonic by not allowing expressions.

> Is it unacceptable - or impractical - to break the addition of switch
> to python in two (minor version separated) steps ?

But what's the point? We have until Python 3000 anyway.

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