Sometimes the golden rule in Python of "explicit is better than implicit" is so cheap that it can be thrown away for the trouble of typing an empty tuple.
Today when I am explaining that in Python 3, there are two ways to raise exceptions: raise Exception raise Exception() and that the first one is the same as the second one, as Python will add the missing pair of parenthesis. I felt their pain as they gasped. Before that, I have already explained to them this piece of code: try: raise SomeException() except SomeException: print('Got an exception here') by saying that the except-clause will match anything that belong to the SomeException class. Without knowing this secrete piece of information (that a pair of parenthesis is automatically provided), the following code would be hard to understand: try: raise SomeException except SomeException: print('Got an exception here') because the class object SomeException is not an instance of itself, so a not-so-crooked coder will not consider a match here. So, the explicit is better than implicit rule is thrown out of the window so cheaply, that it literally worth less than an empty tuple! Regards, Yingjie -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list