Wanderer wrote: > But if you have the colon, why do you need the brackets or backslashes > in an if statement. > > Why not > > if condition1 or > condition2 or > condition3: > do_something() > > The statement ain't over til there's a colon.
Because there are virtues in having the parser be nice and simple. Syntax constraints help identify errors: mystr = "this is a string Should we say that no closing quote is needed, because the newline unambiguously ends the string? Well, perhaps... but allowing such a rule would mask errors: mystr = "this is a %s % type(something) Good language design requires constraints on what is allowed as well as freedom from unnecessary syntax. The appropriate lines from the Zen are Errors should never pass silently. Unless explicitly silenced. Newlines end parsing of the current token or expression. Including a newline inside an expression is an error, unless you explicitly silence it by using a backslash or using brackets. It's a bit too far to say that "any if statement is an explicit way to silent newline errors". -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
