[Python-Dev] Simple syntax proposal: "not is"

Jameson "Chema" Quinn jquinn at cs.oberlin.edu
Fri Jan 25 17:13:12 CET 2008


I'm writing a source code editor that translates identifiers and keywords
on-screen into a different natural language. This tool will do no
transformations except at the reversible word level. There is one simple,
avoidable case where this results in nonsense in many languages: "is not". I
propose allowing "not is" as an acceptable alternative to "is not".

Obviously English syntax has a deep influence on python syntax, and I would
never propose deeper syntactical changes for natural-language-compatibility.
This is a trivial change, one that is still easily parseable by an
English-native mind (and IMO actually makes more sense logically, since it
does not invite confusion with the nonsensical "is (not ...)"). The
use-cases where you have to grep for "is not" are few, and the "(is
not)|(not is)" pattern that would replace it is still pretty simple.
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