A Bug By Any Other Name ...

[Daniel Fetchinson]

>> and my point is that users
>> are most of time correct when they assume that something will work the
>> same way as in C.
>
> Oh, really ? They would surely be wrong if they'd expect the for loop to
> have any similarity with a C for loop, or - a *very* common error - if
> they'd expect assignment to work the same way as in C.

By the way, assignments in conditionals. Guido explicitly referred to
C when he forbade assignment in conditionals, citing common
typos/errors in C code such as if( x = 5 ){ .... } instead of if( x ==
5 ){ ..... }. So even he realized that warning people about different
usage in python and C is a good thing. Expectations from C work
sometimes, and sometimes they don't. In latter case a little warning
is useful.

Cheers,
Daniel

>> So I'd think that putting a warning in a FAQ or a Python Gotchas list
>> about ++n would be very useful for many users.
>
> Might eventually be useful, but I can't hardly recall of more than a
> couple threads on this topic in 8+ years.



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