My newbie annoyances so far

[John Nagle]

Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
> On 27 Apr 2007 08:34:42 -0700, Paul McGuire <ptmcg at austin.rr.com>
> declaimed the following in comp.lang.python:
> 
> 
>>deficient - ternary expressions are now part of the language after
>>years of refugees from C and C++ asking how to write "a = b ? c : d",
>>and now they'll get to puzzle/gripe over mapping this to "a = c if b
>>else d".  But as a newbie, you need to invest a little more time and
> 
> 
> 	And I'll probably ignore those expressions whenever I do get around
> to 2.5+... That syntax, in my mind, just... stinks...

    ALGOL used "expression IF"; you could write

	x := (IF a > b THEN a ELSE b);

but that doesn't map well to an indentation-based language.

    A syntax suitable for Python, now that there's a bool type, might
be to define ".if()" for "bool".  Then one could write

	(a > b).if(a,b)

which is better than adding an operator.

    Such things are useful in formatting expressions.

	msg = 'Unit is %s' % (unitstatus.if("on","off"),)

but not really essential.

				John Nagle