* Thomas Jollans (Mon, 11 Jul 2011 16:16:17 +0200)
> Basically, it looks better, and is more readable.
People tend to overlook the colon for the same reason they tend to
forget to set the colon in the first place:
a) it's a very weak marker in comparison to indentation and
b) it looks like doubling the markup to them (colon plus indentation)
What makes the if syntax for me even more weird, is the fact that you
can have an else clause with an else without a then clause with a then.
if x > 5:
print whatever
else:
print whatever
in comparison to:
if x > 5
then
print whatever
else
print whatever
> A colon, in English like in Python, means that something follows that
> is related to what was before the colon. So the colon makes it
> abundantly clear to the human reader that a block follows,
The block that follows makes it abundantly clear to the human reader
that a block follows.
> and that that block is to be considered in relation to what was just
> said, before the colon.
The indentation makes it abundantly clear to the human reader that that
indented block is to be considered in relation to what was just said,
before the indentation.
Thorsten
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