Neil> The colon's main purpose seems to be to allow one-liners:
Neil> Easy to parse: if a < b: a += 1
Neil> Hard to parse if a < b a += 1
Skip> ... the ABC language designers found that indentation-based block
Skip> structure by itself wasn't enough to clue new users in about the
Skip> code structure. Adding the colon at the end of the if/while/for
Skip> clause helped.
One final note. Just because the colon isn't technically required in many
situations doesn't mean it's superfluous. If all language designers cared
about was ease of parsing we'd probably all be programming in assembler,
sendmail, brainfuck. Or, as the Zen of Python says: "Readability counts".
Skip
P.S. I felt I just had to tie this into the thread on profanity somehow.
But notice that I didn't mention nazis or Hitler. ;-)
S
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