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

[Andrew Barnert]

On May 20, 2013, at 10:22, Ethan Furman <ethan at stoneleaf.us> wrote:

> On 05/15/2013 11:06 PM, Andrew Barnert wrote:
>> From: Steven D'Aprano
>>> Andrew Barnert wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>  Implicit concatenation is bad because you often use it accidentally when
>>> you intended a comma.
>>> 
>>> For some definition of "often".
>> 
>> Well, yes. But Guido says he makes this mistake often, and others agree with him, and the whole discussion wouldn't have come up if it weren't a problem. So, we're still left with the conclusion:
> 
> Actually, Guido said:
>> 
>> This is a fairly common mistake [...]
> 
> Which I understood to mean, "we all make this mistake," not necessarily that we all make this mistake often.

If your point is that Guido didn't think we make the mistake often enough that it's a problem worth solving, that's clearly not true, or he wouldn't have suggested changing the language.

If you just want to rewrite the summary as "Implicit concatenation is bad because you use it accidentally when you intended a comma often enough to cause problems" instead of just "often", fine. But how does that change anything meaningful?