On Sun, Apr 19, 2015 at 9:38 PM, BartC <b...@freeuk.com> wrote: > Suppose there were just two syntaxes: C-like and Python-like (we'll put > aside for a minute the question of what format is used to store Python > source code). > > Why shouldn't A configure his editor to display a Python program in C-like > syntax, and B configure their editor to use Python-like tabbed syntax?
You still haven't addressed the question of the extent of "C-like syntax" for Python. It's not simply a matter of block delimiters. With git (and I believe similarly with hg, but I'm not sure about smaller and/or proprietary source control systems), you can define a pair of filters which transform a file between the actual source control system and your checked-out version, so (for instance) you could have source control work with four-space indents where you work with tab indents. That one's dead easy. With a little more work, you could probably rig something up to use keywords or symbols to delimit blocks of code; braces would be harder, because Python uses them for dicts and sets, so you'd need some sort of context-aware parsing. But the biggest problem is that you wouldn't actually be changing anything else. You'd end up with a bizarre hybrid that uses a tiny bit of C-like syntax, but entirely Python-like syntax everywhere else. For example, Python doesn't allow this: if condition: for i in range(3): do_stuff() So you'd never truly be able to take advantage of the braces. In fact, all you'd _really_ have would be a way to key in some braces, commit to source control, check out again, and have your indentation auto-fixed for you... and if that's all you want, I think there are editors which make the reindenting of code a ton easier than that! As Dave suggests, make yourself a parser which turns *any* legal[1] Python code into your preferred "C-like" syntax, and another which performs a perfect reverse transformation. I suspect you'll find the task fundamentally hard. ChrisA [1] Coping with broken Python code is going to be important later on, but ignore it for now. It's a ton harder to ensure that you can do a reversible syntactic change on something with syntax errors! -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
