colostomy

[Niklas Frykholm]

In article <8bsb8n$2ki$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>, dirck at pacbell.net wrote:

>I brought it up because there was
>some discussion about Python 3k being source level incompatible, which
>indicates some ideas are in flux. Doesn't sound like anyone shares my
>enthusiasm for the minimalist syntax, which isn't a big deal. Over
>time I will adapt ok. In the mean time, if i ever get frustrated when
>I keep messing up, I can switch to a slightly more tolerant python and
>focus on the programming, not on the programming language.

I sometimes forget the colon too, but I believe that this should be
addressed in the editor rather than in the compiler. (You don't want your
printer driver to do spell checking.)

May I suggest adding the following to your python-mode.el file:
(Disclaimer: I am not an elisp programmer.)

(defun colostomy-fix ()
  "Adds a colon to a python line if necessary."
  (let ( (need-colon-regexp "[\\t]*\\(if\\|def\\|else\\|elif\\|\
while\\|for\\|except\\|finally\\|try\\|class\\)")
	 (has-colon-regexp ".*:[ \\t]*$")
	 (need-colon nil)
         (has-colon nil))
    (save-excursion
      (beginning-of-line)
      (setq need-colon (looking-at need-colon-regexp))
      (setq has-colon (looking-at has-colon-regexp))
      )
    (if (and need-colon (not has-colon)) (insert ":") ())
    ))

And modifying the definition of py-newline-and-indent so that it reads:

(defun py-newline-and-indent ()
  (interactive)
  (colostomy-fix)
  (let ((ci (current-indentation)))
   ...

This is a bit of a hack... for example it doesn't work when lines 
have been broken with \. But it works in most cases.

// Niklas