= vs. == in Py3k

[Steven D. Arnold]

At 11:18 PM 6/8/2000 -0700, Lawrence Kesteloot wrote:

>But this isn't worth the trouble it gives new programmers.  The
>syntax could be changed to make = and == equivalent tokens
>and have the parser figure out which is meant from the context,
>just as it's done in Basic.  The documentation would only ever
>mention =, but the language would support == for backward
>compatibility.

Or we could have `==' always be a comparison operator, but if `=' was used 
in `==' context, it would be interpreted as `=='.  One possible negative is 
that this could lead to inconsistent coding and sloppiness, but it seems 
like a virtue of a good scripting language to be as understanding as 
possible about this sort of error.  (I do think at a minimum a user should 
at least be able to set a flag to get compiler warnings, a la perl `-w', 
and when this flag is set, an `=' in an if clause should raise a warning.)


steve