Necessity of ``pass''

[Skip Montanaro]

    forcer> You didn't quote the example where i pointed out the real
    forcer> problem with pass:

    forcer> if foo:
    forcer>     # bar
    forcer>     # baz
    forcer> qux

    forcer> E.g. if you're developing code and just commented out a (not yet
    forcer> worked out branch) to work on a different part of the program.
    forcer> Requireing pass here is unecessary.

A similar problem occurs in try/except statements.  If you want temporarily
disable the try/except so you can see what exception is being raised, you
have to monkey around with the code a bit.  I've gotten used to using "if
0:" and indenting the code another step with C-c > (I use Emacs):

    if foo:
	if 0:
	    bar
	    baz
    qux

The try/except issue is a little messier.  You wind up with something like:

    if 1:
    #try:
	try body
    else:
    #except:
	except body

No language is perfect.  I doubt that eliminating the requirement at least
one statement in a block is going to help much.

There are probably syntactic considerations as well.  If you allow empty
blocks you probably introduce ambiguities in the language that you'd have to 
correct somehow.

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/~skip/
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