Ben Finney wrote: > > I think the colon could be omitted from every type of compound > > statement: 'if', 'for', 'def', 'class', whatever. Am I missing > > anything? > > A use case. What problem is being solved by introducing this > inconsistency?
I agree completely. And as a recent convert to Python, I have to say that I *like* the colons. I found the whitespace-and-colon thing really irritating... for about 2 hours. The colon makes it easier to eyeball where a block statement begins in the absence of braces around the block, it allows one-line if statements (which I use a lot), and it means that even the stupidest, simplest editor can figure out where auto-indentation is needed, namely following any line that ends with a colon (except in a triple-quoted, I guess). Contrast that with Perl, where in years of professional and hobby use I have not found a single editor that gets indentation right more than about 90% of the time. The syntax is too darn complicated. With Python, figuring out where to auto-indent is trivial. Works for me. Dan -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
