Python grammar..

[Alex Martelli]

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message
news:eoc#XQJ9AHA.269 at cpmsnbbsa07...
> "Greg Ewing" <see at my.signature> wrote in message
> news:3B28458C.F171FDB0 at my.signature...
> > "Delaney, Timothy" wrote:
> > >
> > >         a 1     ' OK
> > >         a(1)    ' memory leak
> >
> > The "memory leak" part of that sounds like a bug in the
> > implementation. It doesn't say anything about the merits
> > or otherwise of the syntax.
> >
> Probably not, but if there'd been only one way to call procedures at least
> Microsoft would have been forced to fix the problem rather than accepting
> two syntaxes but only implementing one correctly. VB is, in any case, a

Maybe this is the reason behind the incompatible change
in the move VB.6 -> VB.NET (one of many): all calls to
function and subroutines *DO* now require parentheses --
the parentheses in the call are not optional any more.

> total dog's breakfast from a language point of view.

It looks like VB.NET is marginally better (since all of
the incompatible changes move it closer to Python: it
now has a return statement, which can take a value --
mandatory parentheses on calls, as I mentioned -- no
more "default value" on objects -- no more distinction
between LET and SET assignments -- etc, etc).


Alex