In code, list.clear doesn't throw error - it's just ignored

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, 14 Nov 2022 at 13:18, MRAB <python at mrabarnett.plus.com> wrote:
>
> On 2022-11-14 00:55, Greg Ewing wrote:
> > On 14/11/22 1:31 pm, Jon Ribbens wrote:
> >> On 2022-11-13, DFS <nospam at dfs.com> wrote:
> >>> But why is it allowed in the first place?
> >>
> >> Because it's an expression, and you're allowed to execute expressions.
> >
> > To put it a bit more clearly, you're allowed to evaluate
> > an expression and ignore the result.
> >
> But if it's an expression where it's expecting a statement and it's not
> a call, then it's probably a bug.

Maybe, but I'd be dubious of making it that simplistic. For instance,
which of these is more likely to be useless?

spam or ham()
spam() or ham

Syntactically, both of them are 'or' expressions, but one of them is
almost certainly unnecessary, while the other is just an oddly-written
conditional statement and most definitely useful.

In any case, this is the job of linters, NOT the language itself.

ChrisA