why no ++?

[Michael Abbott]

Duncan Booth <duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk> wrote in
news:Xns90FC6932FB561duncanrcpcouk at 127.0.0.1: 

> Michael Abbott <michael at rcp.co.uk> wrote in
> news:Xns90FC57863FF5michaelrcpcouk at 194.238.50.13: 
> 
>>> It's the same as 
>>>>>> a = (b,c,d) = e = 'wow'
>>> 
>> 
>> I would say that the criminal obfuscation here comes from the ability
>> to perform more than one assignment in a sequence; this is almost as
>> bad as treating an assignment as an expression.  If we write this as
>> 
>>          e = 'wow'
>>          b,c,d = e
>>          a = b,c,d
>> 
>> then it's quite clear what's going on.  (It's just a=b=c etc I'm
>> grumbling about here.)
>> 
> Except that your rewriting has a different effect. In the first case a
> ends up with the same value as e, whereas your 'expanded' version gives
> e=='wow' and a==('w','o','w')
> 
> 

Oops!  Very true.  I should have rewritten it as

    	e = 'wow'
    	b,c,d = 'wow'
    	a = 'wow'

Hmm.  The argument about obfuscation versus repetition comes more clearly 
into focus.  I still think multiple assignment is a bad thing...