if <assignment>:

[Greg Ewing]

Isaac To wrote:

> 
> How about if Python disallow functions to do anything "with a side effect"?
> After all, function calls are expressions.


Technically, yes, but all that means is that the
Python grammar doesn't make some distinctions that
I nevertheless make in my brain when I'm coding.

When I write a statement, I tend to think of it
as either something to be evaluated (expression)
or a command to do something (procedure call or
assignment).

A statement which starts out looking like one of
these and part way through changes into the other
can be confusing.

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept,
University of Canterbury,	
Christchurch, New Zealand
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg