[Python-ideas] Implicit string literal concatenation considered harmful?

Steven D'Aprano steve at pearwood.info
Sat May 11 07:36:39 CEST 2013


On 11/05/13 04:48, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> I just spent a few minutes staring at a bug caused by a missing comma
> -- I got a mysterious argument count error because instead of foo('a',
> 'b') I had written foo('a' 'b').
>
> This is a fairly common mistake, and IIRC at Google we even had a lint
> rule against this (there was also a Python dialect used for some
> specific purpose where this was explicitly forbidden).
>
> Now, with modern compiler technology, we can (and in fact do) evaluate
> compile-time string literal concatenation with the '+' operator, so
> there's really no reason to support 'a' 'b' any more. (The reason was
> always rather flimsy; I copied it from C but the reason why it's
> needed there doesn't really apply to Python, as it is mostly useful
> inside macros.)
>
> Would it be reasonable to start deprecating this and eventually remove
> it from the language?


Not unless you guarantee that compile-time folding of string literals with '+' will be a language feature rather than an optional optimization.

I frequently use implicit string concatenation for long strings, or to keep within the 80 character line limit. I teach people to prefer it over '+' because:

- constant folding is an implementation detail that is not guaranteed, and not all versions of Python support;

- even when provided, constant folding is an optimization which might not be present in the future[1];

- implicit string concatenation is a language feature, so every Python must support it;

- and is nicer than the current alternatives involving backslashes or triple-quoted strings.


The problems caused by implicit string concatenation are uncommon and mild. Having two string literals immediately next to each other is uncommon; forgetting the comma makes it rarer. So I think the benefit of implicit string concatenation far outweighs the occasional problem.






[1] I recall you (GvR) publicly complaining about CPython optimizations and suggesting that they are more effort than they are worth and should be dropped. I don't recall whether you explicitly included constant folding in that.




-- 
Steven



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