On Fri, May 8, 2015 at 2:53 PM, Rustom Mody <rustompm...@gmail.com> wrote: > Yeah I know > And if python did not try to be so clever, I'd save some time with > student-surprises > >> In a program, an expression >> statement simply discards its result, whether it's None or 42 or >> [1,2,3] or anything else. You could write an interactive interpreter >> that has some magic that recognizes that certain functions always >> return None (maybe by checking their annotations), and omits printing >> their return values, while still printing the return values of other >> functions. > > > Hoo Boy! You seem to be in the 'the-more-the-better' (of magic) camp
No way! I wouldn't want the interactive interpreter to go too magical. I'm just saying that it wouldn't break Python to have it do things differently. >> I'm not sure what it'd gain you, but it wouldn't change the >> concepts or semantics surrounding None returns. > > It would sure help teachers who get paid by the hour and would rather spend > time on technical irrelevantia than grapple with significant concepts Why have the concept of a procedure? Python's rule is simple: Every function either returns a value or raises an exception. (Even generators. When you call a generator function, you get back a return value which is the generator state object.) The procedure/function distinction is irrelevant. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
