Concrete Proposal: while ... and while ...

[Paul Boddie]

Phil Hunt wrote:
> 
> In article <374AD624.AB93C9CB at infercor.no>
>            paulb at infercor.no "Paul Boddie" writes:

[Cutting leaving one example I gave earlier]

> > while:          # No getting away from this, sadly.
> >   first_part
> > break if test2  # Imaginative use of existing keywords.
> >                 # No second block, however. It could confuse.
> 
> There is already a syntax for `if' and `break' that does this, ie:
>    if test2: break

Not quite, since this is a special case - note the indentation.

> So what you are suggesting could be generalized, so that all
> statements for the form:
> 
>    if test: do_something
> 
> can be rewritten as:
> 
>    do_something if test

Not at all, as I am not suggesting that the above be anything other that the
terminating part of a loop block. I was merely exploring the possibilities using
available keywords.

> This is useful, because it offers the programmer different ways to do
> things -- different programmers prefer different ways of doing things,
> so this way they'll all get what they want.

At this point I knew what you were about to say.

> In fact, there already exists a language designed on these principles.
> It is called Perl. (Some people have even gone as far to suggest that
> Perl should replace Python as a general-purpose scripting language
> because of its superior and easier-to-understand syntax). So I suggest
> that Python 2.0 should include the entire syntax of Perl, as well as
> the ``and while test:'' and ``break if test'' constructs.

Ignoring the sarcasm, which is rather unnecessary, I did "do" Perl before I
found out about Python, so these syntactic "niceties" are not unfamiliar to me.
At first it does seem a nice idea to have lots of ways of expressing one single
concept, but only until one has to maintain Perl code from the week before.

Paul