Input() in Python3

[harrismh777]

Chris Rebert wrote:
> Well, it pretty much*was*  totally removed; it was prone to misuse and
> had very few legitimate uses. It's just that raw_input() also got
> renamed simultaneously.
> What were you using it for? There are often much better alternatives.

For the purpose pretty much described in PEP 3111... education.

Teaching new programmers  input, control, arithmetic, logic, and output 
  works best with simple built-ins. IMHO

I want to teach young folks how to get stuff into their simple programs, 
crank on them a bit, and spit out the results... without having to teach 
them imports, libraries, &etc.

Keep in mind that some of this stuff is very simple (say trivial) and is 
being used to provide a way to get the data 'they are expecting' into 
the program easily, with a prompt.

This was the great concept in BASIC, and REXX, and others.  The C 
language broke with this concept by declaring that the language does not 
provide I/O   ... only in the standard library, as functions!

The beauty of Python (as I've noted before) is that it can be used in an 
uber-sophisticated way... AND it can also be taught to children!  Having 
thought a little more about that, I suppose that I agree that input() 
should return a raw string. After all, the students aren't really 
entering "numbers" are they?? They are entering strings of characters 
that need to be converted into numbers... easily explained... I was just 
surprised to find that issue so hotly debated... again, why remove 
something that works.

The wisdom was to use a system call instead, right?



kind regards,

m harris