[Python-Dev] Lukewarm about range literals

[Guido van Rossum]

> How about a:b to indicate the range starting at a and ending with b-1?

I believe this is what the Nummies originally suggested.

> which doesn't look so bad to me, but is probably ambiguous.  Hmmm,
> could this possibly work or is it too much of a collision with the use
> of `:' to indicate block structure?

Alas, it could never work.  Look at this:

  for i in a:b:c

Does it mean

  for i in (a:b) : c

or

  for i in a: (b:c)

?

So we're back to requiring *some* form of parentheses.

I'm postponing this discussion until after Python 2.0 final is
released -- the feature freeze is real!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.pythonlabs.com/~guido/)