[Tutor] bnf

[Brian van den Broek]

Danny Yoo said unto the world upon 2005-12-10 20:23:
>>>  hello everyone. i was looking at python docs and i came across this
>>>
>>>  letter ::=
>>>               lowercase | uppercase
>>>
>>>
>>>  what does ::= mean?
>>
>>goodness knows, maillists and usenet would be better if more people
>>(myself included) would do a better job of their own googling. But,
>>I'm not sure that your comment is fair in this context. Maybe my
>>google-fu is lacking, but googling for ::= or "::=" doesn't produce
>>anything.
> 
> 
> The question is a little mixed here.  I agree that '::=' is obscure enough
> that asking for help about it is certainly appropriate and right.
> 
> At the same time, though, there's a section right at the beginning of the
> Python Reference Manual that does talk about the notation used in the rest
> of the document:


Hi Danny and all,

I take your point about the information being available to the OP in 
the docs. I was reacting to the follow up post which I read as saying 
something like "Don't bug us if you are lazy". That struck me as less 
friendly than the usual tone on the list.

The mistake was entirely mine, though. I didn't notice that the 
"google it" follow-up *was* from the OP by way of apologizing for 
asking a question that was easy enough to answer for oneself.

So, :-[

Best to all,

Brian vdB