Proposal: Magic Constants

[Michael Hudson]

"John Roth" <newsgroups at jhrothjr.com> writes:

> "Michael Hudson" <mwh at python.net> wrote in message
> news:7h3r837ce12.fsf at pc150.maths.bris.ac.uk...
> > "John Roth" <newsgroups at jhrothjr.com> writes:
> >
> > > But these are existing literal syntax. I was thinking
> > > more of random code where someone could currently
> > > juxtapose a literal and an identifier, say, without an
> > > intervening white space character.
> >
> > >>> 10and 1
> > 1
> > >>> 5or 7
> > 5
> >
> > Very much a wart of the tokenizer, though.
> 
> Ah, right. I forgot about alphabetic operators.
> 
> Why do you call it a wart, though?  I would have
> thought that not requiring white space in that context
> was a feature.

Well, it's just odd.  I'm pretty sure it's not intentional, and fairly
sure it's not documented.  I don't care enough to check, though :-)

Cheers,
mwh

-- 
  In many ways, it's a dull language, borrowing solid old concepts
  from many other languages & styles:  boring syntax, unsurprising
  semantics, few  automatic coercions, etc etc.  But that's one of
  the things I like about it.                 -- Tim Peters, 16 Sep 93