For review: PEP 308 - If-then-else expression
Anders J. Munch
andersjm at inbound.dk
Mon Feb 10 14:48:38 EST 2003
"Andrew Koenig" <ark at research.att.com> wrote:
> Because this proposal is incomplete, I don't know how to evaluate it;
> but I think that if you fill in the details, you will find it
> to be larger than mine.
Here's a complete set with all options included. Based on the grammer
in the 2.2 docs.
# Two new nonterminals:
if_expr_list ::=
if_expr ( "," if_expr )* [","]
if_expr ::=
"if" comparison ":" if_expr "else" ":" if_expr
| expression
# Three productions modified by replacing expression_list by if_expr_list:
parenth_form ::=
"(" [if_expr_list] ")"
string_conversion ::=
"`" if_expr_list "`"
subscription ::=
primary "[" if_expr_list "]"
Tally: Three productions added, three modified. Incidentally this is
exactly the same as your proposal. Did I miss something? Note that
not allowing if_expr at top level in slicings and list comprehensions
is deliberate.
> Anders> I think requiring parens like this would be a good idea with all
> Anders> syntaxes, lest we want to see
> Anders> if A if B if C else D else E:
>
> This example is obviously illegal on several counts--not the least
> of which is the missing colons--so I'm not worried.
It's written in Guido's notation from the PEP. Translated into the
notation we are discussing it becomes
if if if C: B else: D: A else: E:
With required parentheses that would be:
if (if (if C: B else: D): A else: E):
IMO much easier to read. Granted a very contrived example.
- Anders
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