On Mon, 01 Sep 2008 22:11:13 -0700, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote: > On Tue, 02 Sep 2008 13:51:16 +1000, Ben Finney > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> declaimed the following in > comp.lang.python: > >> This is no more the case than for literal strings: >> >> a = "spam" "eggs" "ham" >> >> a = "spam", "eggs", "ham" >> > But... Literal string still have the " (or ') delimiters around the > components. Such does not exist for you example with integers. > > Consider > > a = "spam, eggs", "ham" > vs > a = "spam, eggs" "ham"
Quite frankly, I think that it's a stretch to say that leaving out a tuple delimiter is a problem with whitespace inside numeric literals. That's hardly unique to whitespace: atuple = 5,6,7,8 vs atuple = 5,67,8 Look Ma, no whitespace! But even if allowing whitespace inside numeric literals did create a new avenue for errors which never existed before, it is a mistake to only consider the downside without the upside. In my opinion, that would be rather like declaring that the syntax for attribute access is a mistake because you might do this: x = MyClass() xy = 4 instead of this: x = MyClass() x.y = 4 At some point the programmer has to take responsibility for typos instead of blaming the syntax of the language. I agree that we should avoid syntax that *encourages* typos, but I don't believe that allowing whitespace inside numeric literals does that. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
