Python from Wise Guy's Viewpoint

[David Eppstein]

In article <mailman.262.1066668221.2192.python-list at python.org>,
 Gerrit Holl <gerrit at nl.linux.org> wrote:

> > I fail to see the lack of uniformity. "print" and "del" are statements,
> 
> I think it is not uniform that print and del are statements rather than
> functions, since they don't do control flow (just like exec). In all
> three cases, I don't see why it is a statement.

It's not obvious how to write e.g. del a[x] as a function, since the 
argument is an lvalue (position x of list a) rather than an rvalue (the 
item in position x of list a).

Exec needs to be executed in the current scope, not the scope of another 
function call.

Print, I agree, is something of a wart, but a useful one.

-- 
David Eppstein                      http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/
Univ. of California, Irvine, School of Information & Computer Science