Why '==' ??

[Diez B. Roggisch]

> It's possible there are places where the interpreter could fail to
> understand it, but I haven't found them yet. If there *aren't* any
> situations where one could be confused for the other... then it's not
> needed and is annoying :-)

Thats a matter of taste - its easy to spot a comparision, and typing an
additional "=" if you're already over the key - well, python spares me so
wuch typing, I can live with that.

> The same could equally well be true for the trailing ':' after def, if
> etc statements..............

You are allowed to write

if cond: expression

so the colon makes sense here I believe. And as someone who loathed the
rules for ".", ",", ";" placement in pascal, I can live with the colon even
if a newline appears after the if/def/whatever. Think of the coding
conventions for C or JAVA that forbid the usage of

if(cond)
  statement;

and instead insist on {} put around the statements.

Too much freedom in syntax leads to religious wars waged over the style to
use - I'm glad that python lacks that stylewars.

-- 
Regards,

Diez B. Roggisch