This is a question for the language mavens that I know hang out here.
It is not Python related, except that recent comparisons of Python to
Google's new Go language brought it to mind.
NOTE that this is *not* a suggestion to change Python. I like Python
just the way it is. I'm just curious about language design.
For a long time I've wondered why languages still use blocks
(delimited by do/end, begin/end, { } , etc.) in ifThenElse statements.
I've often thought that a language with this kind of block-free syntax
would be nice and intuitive:
if <condition> then
do stuff
elif <condition> then
do stuff
else
do stuff
endif
Note that you do not need block delimiters.
Obviously, you could make a more Pythonesque syntax by using a colon
rather then "then" for the condition terminator. You could make it
more PL/I-like by using "do", etc.
You can write shell scripts using if ... fi, but other than that I
don't recall a language with this kind of syntax.
Does anybody know a language with this kind of syntax for
ifThenElseEndif?
Is there any particular reason why this might be a *bad* language-
design idea?
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