Why aren't colons optional?

[David C. Ullrich]

On Sun, 20 Jan 2002 19:11:05 GMT, "Fredrik Lundh"
<fredrik at pythonware.com> wrote:

>Hans Nowak wrote:
>
>> Note the colons in your own post. :-)
>
>People who complain about this always use colons
>correctly in their own posts, 

Are you _certain_ that the first colon in

"Obviously, colons are required in:

  if a == 1 : b = c
  elif a == 2 : b = d
  else : b = e"

is correct? I can't put my finger on exactly why
but it rubs me the wrong way - I'd think that a
colon would be appropriate if he'd said

"Obviously, colons are required in the following:"

Ah, Strunk&White "the Elements of Style" agree;
on p.7 they say "Use a colon after an independent
clause..." - the point is that "Obviously, colons
are required in" is not an independent clause,
while "Obviously, colons are required in the
following" _is_ an independent clause.

They give a few examples in case we don't follow
that: They state explicitly that

"You dedicated whittler requires: a knife, a piece
of wood, and a back porch."

is wrong and should be rewritten

"Your dedicated whittler requires three props:
a knife, a piece of wood, and a back porch."

followed by a similar example where the suggested
rewriting simply eliminates the colon.

(Now we gotta change Python from "for j in range(10):"
to "for j in range(10) do the following:")

>and they never under-
>stand arguments that ends with a smiley ;-)

That's clear.

></F>
>
>


David C. Ullrich