PEP 308: A PEP Writer's Experience - PRO

[David Ascher]

Tim Peters wrote:

>[Tim]
>  
>
>>OTOH, when I read Micahel's post, I had no idea whether
>>
>>    print "x = " + x.getDisplayString() if x else "None"
>>
>>would group as:
>>
>>    print ("x = " +   (x.getDisplayString() if x else "None"))
>>
>>or as:
>>
>>    print (("x = " + x.getDisplayString())   if x else "None")
>>
>>and I didn't even know which way he *intended*.  Spelled with an if-
>>statement instead, the intent is obvious instead of a puzzle.
>>    
>>
>
>[Andrew Koenig]
>  
>
>>Or spelled with an extra pair of parentheses.
>>    
>>
>I didn't think so:  that's why there's also extra horizontal whitespace in
>the above, to put the pieces that group together closer to each other.
>Either could be improved by dropping the outermost parens, although
>experience with Perl gives me a confusing impression then too because of the
>"if near the end of a line" business.
>  
>
I think that Python precedence rules should use a count of whitespace, 
it would make life a lot simpler.

So instead of:

    a * (b + c)

you'd write
   a *  b+c

or
  a *       b + c

Much clearer, no?

--da

PS: the weight of tabs and escaped newlines in the precendence algorithm 
is left as an exercise for the reader.