Python 2.0b1 is released!

[Thomas Wouters]

On Fri, Sep 08, 2000 at 03:58:29PM +0200, Richard van de Stadt wrote:

> Talking about adding 1 to x:

> Are x++, ++x now also allowed?
> (did someone say c++?)

They're not valid syntax, if that's what you mean. They are allowed, though,
in code such as this:

print x++ 1

It just doesn't do what you intend it to do ;-)

The auto-increment/decrement operators were not added because they do not
nearly make as much sense as the augmented assignment operators: like their
names suggest, they are intended to 'increment' a value, and practically
never used for something other than a number (don't get me started on Perl's
"string"++, please ;P) or a pointer (which is also a number.) Python doesn't
have pointers, doesn't need pointers, numbers are immutable, and the need to
increment a number is much less frequent, in Python. You usually do 

for i in range(100):
	...code...

rather than

int i;
for (i=0; i<100; i++)
	...code...

or

y = "string"
x = y

rather than

char * y = "string"
char x[100];

while (y != '\0')
	x++ = *y++;


-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

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