PEP-308 a "simplicity-first" alternative

[Erik Max Francis]

Tony Lownds wrote:

> That would be fine with me. A bit better than and/else, having a
> operator conceptually be both binary and ternary puts me off.

Agree completely.  The benefit of the decay to a binary operator carries
no weight with me; it's still unreadable.  If anything, that is _more_
of a turn-off; it means that the entire meaning changes based on whether
the else is there or not.  Not a very good idea in a language where
explicit is better than implicit.

> What advantage does this have over either `if C: x else: y' or `C then
> x else y'

I only mentioned it because it was one of the alternatives mentioned in
the PEP.  The objection to it seemed to be the `if' keyword, so the
obvious compromise is `C then x else y' (with which I would be
satisfied).  I still believe the full `if C: x else: y' is the best
alternative, but I would be satisfied with any of these three.

> So what about `C ? x : y' ?

Rejected by BDFL.

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