[Python-ideas] Making colons optional? Syntactic alternative.

[Riobard Zhan]

On 5-Feb-09, at 8:56 AM, spir wrote:

> Le Wed, 4 Feb 2009 23:35:30 -0330,
> Riobard Zhan <yaogzhan at gmail.com> a écrit :
>
>> Hi everybody,
>>
>>
>> I'm proposing to make colons optional.
>
> I 99% agree with that. But 100% sure this will never happen. No  
> chance at all, imo... Still, it may be worth exchanging some  
> thoughts on the topic as an opprtunity to take some distance, and  
> watch python common traits with an outer look (correct?).

I am a little bit different than you in the numbers--I 100% dislike  
colons, but 99% sure they will never be made optional. That last 1%  
leads me to give it a try here :) I totally agree with you that  
discussing such issues would be a great chance to learn something  
about Python. How many Python users outside this mailing list  
understand the rationale behind colons? I guess it might be a few.  
It's an issue worth thinking.


> A kind of meaning conflict nevertheless exists even in python  
> itself: a ':' sign even more nicely carries a sense of binding, or  
> link. Python uses this common world semantics in dict litteral  
> key:value pairs.

Colons are also used for slicing. Seem to be overused ...