[issue46385] Remove parenthetical symbols for readability and nlp

[Steven D'Aprano]

Steven D'Aprano <steve+python at pearwood.info> added the comment:

Dennis beat me to it in saying that tuples cannot be replaced by lists.

But I also wanted to say that it is *not true* that removing bracket symbols would increase readability. Natural language allows parenthetical phrases -- which can be bracketed using dashes (or with parentheses [commonly called round brackets in the British commonwealth]) or even commas -- so even in natural language they are used.

Even programming languages which are much, much closer to natural language than Python, like Hypertalk and Inform-7, use parentheses and delimiters for various purposes, for example:

http://inform7.com/book/WI_21_3.html

Ultimately, we simply can't remove brackets (square, round or curly) from the language. It would make it impossible to tell whether

    func(1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

was a call to func() with 5 integer arguments, or a single 5-element list argument, or two 2-element lists and an integer, or three integers and a 2-element list, etc.

So don't waste your time taking this proposal to Python-Ideas.

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nosy: +steven.daprano

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