[Python-Dev] Easier debugging with f-strings

[Steven D'Aprano]

Disclaimer: this topic seems to have been split over at least two issues 
on the bug tracker, a Python-Ideas thread from 2018, Discourse (I 
think...) and who knows what else. I haven't read it all, so excuse me 
if I'm raising something already discussed.

On Mon, May 06, 2019 at 08:39:41PM -0400, Eric V. Smith wrote:

> After that lightning talk, Larry and I talked about it some more, and 
> for a number of reasons decided that it would make more sense if the 
> syntax used an = sign. So we came up with f"{foo=}", which would also 
> produce "foo='Hello'".
> 
> The reasons for the change are:
> - Having '=' in the expression is a better mnemonic than !d.
> - By not using a conversion starting with !, we can compose = with the 
> existing ! conversions, !r, !s, and the rarely used !a.
> - We can let the user have a little more control of the resulting string.

You're going to hate me for bike-shedding, but I really don't like using 
= as a defacto unary postfix operator. To me, spam= is always going to 
look like it was meant to be spam==<something> and the second half got 
accidentally deleted.

I don't have a better suggestion, sorry.

In an earlier draft, back when this was spelled !d, you specifically 
talked about whitespace. Does this still apply?

    spam = 42
    f'{spam=}'  # returns 'spam=42'
    f'{spam =}'  # returns 'spam =42'
    f'{spam = }'  # returns 'spam = 42' I guess?
    f'{spam+1=}'  # returns 'spam+1=41' I guess?




-- 
Steven