On Thu, Nov 2, 2017 at 8:12 AM, Alexey Muranov <alexey.mura...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello, > > what do you think about the idea of replacing "`else`" with "`then`" in the > contexts of `for` and `try`? > > It seems clear that it should be rather "then" than "else." Compare also > "try ... then ... finally" with "try ... else ... finally". > > Currently, with "else", it is almost impossible to guess the meaning without > looking into the documentation. > > Off course, it should not be changed in Python 3, maybe in Python 4 or 5, > but in Python 3 `then` could be an alias of `else` in these contexts. >
The cost of creating a new keyword is incredibly high. You'll need to demonstrate much more than a marginal improvement. With try/except/else, it's "do this, and if an exception happens, do this, else do this". So else makes perfect sense. With the 'for' loop, it's a bit more arguable, but I've never seen anything more than a weak argument in favour of 'then', and since it'd be a completely new keyword, there's very approximately 0% chance that this will be changed. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
