[Info] PEP 308 accepted - new conditional expressions

[Terry Hancock]

On Sunday 09 October 2005 07:50 am, phil hunt wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Oct 2005 01:05:12 -0500, Terry Hancock <hancock at anansispaceworks.com> wrote:
> >GvR's syntax has the advantage of making grammatical sense in English (i.e.
> >reading it as written pretty much makes sense).
> 
> I know, let's re-write Python to make it more like COBOL! That's 
> bound to be a winner!

Whereas the "natural order" of "condition affirmative negative" is natural
for what reason?  That it is so in C?

I don't find that so compelling either, frankly.  Why should it really
matter in the end?  I've always found C's order (and punctuation) confusing,
I have to look it up practically everytime I use it or have to read it 
(which correlates to it being used very rarely, with causality in both
directions).

Given that situation, choosing a form which is easy to read is surely
an advantage, and, since it is the way that Python has handled logic
in the past, it makes sense to continue doing so.

No doubt, ANY choice of ternary operator for Python will be
criticized, and no doubt, ANY choice would nevertheless be
usable.

OTOH, I think this choice is consistent with the rest of Python's
design. The general choice to use keyword operators for LOGIC
and symbolic operators for MATH is retained, and so long as we're
describing the logic in words, it makes sense for the wording
to sound natural.

Consistency certainly does make it easier for me to remember.

Python's main advantage over other languages, for me, is that
it makes me run to the manual a lot less, and I generally don't
get confused trying to follow other people's code.


--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks  http://www.anansispaceworks.com