Bill Mill wrote: > On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 10:47:28 -0800, James Stroud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> On Tuesday 15 March 2005 08:25 am, Roy Smith wrote: >> > a = () # tuple of zero elements >> > a = (1,) # tuple of one element >> > a = 1, # tuple of one element >> > a = (1) # scalar >> > a = (1, 2) # tuple of two elements >> > a = 1, 2 # tuple of two elements >> > a = , # syntax error >> > >> > The big question is, is it the parens that make it a tuple, or is it >> > the comma? If you go along with the parens school of thought, then >> > (1,) is the special case. If you believe in commas, then the () is >> > the special case. In either case, it's a bit ugly, but we learn to >> > overlook the occasional cosmetic blemishes of those we love :-) >> >> The answer is obvious, the naked comma should be an empty tuple. >> > > The other answer, that parens should be required to surround all > tuples, is obvious too. > > Neither is particularly appealing; a lone comma creating a data > structure seems counter-intuitive, but it's nice to do a, b = b, a > instead of (a, b) = (b, a) . In this case, since the need to create > empty tuples is vanishingly rare, I'm okay with a little > inconsistency.
And if you don't like it at all, you can still use tuple() to "create" an empty tuple. Reinhold -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
