On Wed, 5 Jul 2005, George Sakkis wrote: > "Steven D'Aprano" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> On Tue, 05 Jul 2005 09:46:41 -0500, Terry Hancock wrote: > [snip] > >> Def would be short for ... defend? defile? defer? defame? default? deflect? >> >> There's always *something* to learn. Why def instead of define? Because >> "easy to write" beats "instantly obvious to a beginner", if the word is >> used all the time and is easy to memorize. > > Still it's hard to explain why four specific python keywords - def, > del, exec and elif - were chosen to be abbreviated, while all the rest > are full words (http://docs.python.org/ref/keywords.html). "Ease of > typing" is a joke for an excuse;
For exec and probably del, yes, but def and elif are two of the most frequently used keywords in the language, so i think it's reasonable to keep them short. > So, who would object the full-word versions for python 3K ? > > def -> define I'd keep this short - it's one of the most commonly-used keywords. It's particularly commonly used if you break your programs down into lots of little functions; since this is, IMHO, something we want to encourage people to do, we should strive to minimise boilerplate. > del -> delete How about just getting rid of del? Removal from collections could be done with a method call, and i'm not convinced that deleting variables is something we really need to be able to do (most other languages manage without it). > exec -> execute This should be a function somewhere, maybe a builtin, maybe not - it absolutely should not be a keyword. What that function should be called, i don't know! > elif -> else if I'm not sure about splitting it into two words; there's currently a very simple relationship between flow control keywords, meanings, and blocks of code, which would be broken if we moved to using "else if". I don't know that this relationship is actually important, though. tom -- Don't believe his lies. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
