Op 2005-02-10, Nick Coghlan schreef <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Antoon Pardon wrote: >> Well it seems you have some fair points. I'll just stop here stating >> that I would like to have it, even if it proved to be slower. Speed >> is not that big a factor in the things I write. > > Oh, certainly. I wasn't suggesting the speed hit was enough to kill the idea > - I > was just pointing it was something that you would use when correctness and > being > explicit was considered more important than a small price in speed. And if > the > name check got optimised out like an assert does. . . Hey, that gives me an > idea > (see below). > >> I just would like >> to ask a question relating semantics. Supose the following code. >> >> x = 42 >> >> def f(): >> x := 21 # or x .= 42 I don't remember what you used exactly > > Alex used ':=' in a couple of examples, but you'll have to ask him his > reasons. > > I used '.=' instead mainly because I think colons are ugly, but also because > ':=' has the ability to trigger confusion due to its slightly different use > in > those languages which use it for assignment (Eiffel and Pascal come to mind. > . . > since Pascal uses it, I guess Delphi does too).
I don't think that would be a big issue. Python uses '=' also differently from a number of languages. My preference would currently be for ':=' because I have the impression that if you don't leave spaces the period in '.=' tends to be obscured. x.=42 vs x:=42 seems a clear win for the second IMO. -- Antoon Pardon -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list