Why does python not have a mechanism for data hiding?

[Antoon Pardon]

On 2008-06-07, BJörn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 2:02 PM, Antoon Pardon <apardon at forel.vub.ac.be> wrote:
>> Now of course noone would defend such a limitation on the grounds
>> that one doesn't need the general case and that the general case
>> will only save you some vertical space.
>>
>> But when it came to the ternary operator that was exactly the
>> argument used, to defend the lack of it.
>
> As far as I remember, the primary motivation was developers experience
> with the ternary operator in other languages, especially C, where it
> was found to hurt readability. At least in my experience, it is much
> much more common to see the ternary operator making code more
> obfuscated than easing readability. Time will tell if Python's if-else
> expression will be abused in the same way.

That seems strange to me. The and-or simulation that was offerd in the
FAQ allowed for about the same kind of structures as the ternary
operator in C and was used in the standard library IIRC.

So the same unreadable was already possible to write, plus that it
could cause bugs and had to be made even more unreadable in order
to work correctly. Considering this it I find it odd that hurting
readability was a motivation not to have it.

-- 
Antoon Pardon