Why '==' ??
Fuzzyman
michael at foord.net
Wed Mar 31 02:19:14 EST 2004
"Tim Peters" <tim.one at comcast.net> wrote in message news:<mailman.124.1080662765.20120.python-list at python.org>...
> [John Roth]
> > I believe the earliest versions of Python did use the single equal
> > sign for comparisons. I don't know why Guido changed it, but
> > it might be in order to keep his options open.
>
> It was to stop ambiguity. This was especially acute at an interactive
> shell, where guessing what
>
> >>> x = y
>
> intended often guessed wrong <wink> (it's common to wonder whether two
> things are equal at a shell prompt). After the change, that became obvious:
>
> >>> x = y # assignment
> >>> x == y # equal?
> False
> >>>
Despite *all* that...
The lines
if a = 3
print 'Yeah baby'
are still *unambiguous*.... yet the interpreter refuses to understand
you......
Theres no reason why a single '=' shouldn't be understood in a
conditional....
As for needing a ':' to allow statements after a 'def' or a
conditional.... python already has the ';' for that... why insist on a
':'
Regards,
Fuzzy
http://www.voidspace.org.uk/atlantibots/pythonutils.html
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