Are Python's reserved words reserved in places they dont need to be?

[Steve Holden]

metaperl wrote:
> Istvan Albert wrote:
> 
>>metaperl wrote:
>>
>>>-->  python -i
>>>
>>>>>>class = "algebra"
>>>
>>>  File "<stdin>", line 1
>>>    class = "algebra"
>>>          ^
>>>SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>
>>Designing a syntax to avoid all possible newbie errors is impractical
>>because as soon as you are finished with one iteration the new newbies
>>will start making different kinds of errors...
>>
>>Take solace in the fact that you've been immediately notifed of the
>>error while its fix: renaming pass to passwd is trivial ...
> 
> 
> The error message is not very explicit - "class is a reserved word"
> will make far more sense to a new programmer than SyntaxError.
> Especially since the expression is rather innocent looking and
> correct-looking.
> 
Well maybe, but one might as well have the interpreter complain that 
'"=" is an invalid class name'. Once an unmatchable token is encountered 
which parsing it's often difficult from inside the parser to determine 
exactly what the programmer's intent was.

Otherwise you could try and fix the error, like the PL/1 F-level 
compiler used to. This would usually work when all that was wrong was a 
missing semicolon, but it frequently went completely berserk in other 
cases, leading to strange and implausible error reports.

regards
  Steve
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