PEP 308 - keeping it simple

[Ian Parker]

In article <RwO3a.135333$HN5.529257 at rwcrnsc51.ops.asp.att.net>, djw 
<dwelch91 at no.spam.attbi.com> writes
>Ian Parker wrote:
>> Several posters have mentioned the FAQ entry:
>>  4.16. Is there an equivalent of C's "?:" ternary operator?
>>  Different implementations of a ternary operator will lead to
>> embarrassing FAQ entries:
>>  4.16. Is there an equivalent of C's "?:" ternary operator?
>> Yes, as you know Python is an elegantly simple language and of course
>> provides a ternary operator equivalent to "c?a:b", although more
>> long-winded, and requiring parentheses
>>    (if c then a else b)
>>  or
>>  4.16. Is there an equivalent of C's "?:" ternary operator?
>> Yes, just use a similar construction to an if statement, but swap the
>> order of the terms around a little to get
>>     a if c else b
>> which everyone agrees would be a natural way to express a conditional,
>> if one wasn't already familiar with the order used in if statements.
>>   Let's just go for the C way of doing this so that we can drop the 
>>FAQ
>> entry entirely.
>>
>Or, we could just adopt C syntax for the entire language and drop 
>Python specific documentation altogether. <Wink> Seriously though, for 
>me, having syntax that looks like C (or Perl, Pascal, etc, etc) is not 
>something to strive for. On the contrary, I find constructs like x ? y 
>: z to be rather hard to read. Python is not C. Let's keep it that way!
>
>/d/
>

Adopting all of C might be going a bit far, but I don't mind having a 
few operators in common!

I'd agree that the "x ? y : z" is harder to read than a binary operator, 
but it is surely simpler than a list comprehension and look how quickly 
one gets used to those.   I was initially peeved at fashionable 
complications being introduced into Python and it was only when I 
actually bothered to write a list comprehension that I realised how easy 
and convenient it was.

-- 
Ian Parker