Py3K idea: why not drop the colon?

[skip at pobox.com]

    >>>>> I'm not sure why '\'s are required to do multi-line before the colon.
    >>>> Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
    >>>> 
    >>>> Georg
    >>> A bit of a circular answer.
    >>> 
    >>> Why the rule? -> So not to break the rule?
    >> 
    >> You proposed to allow leaving off line continuation '\' only in the
    >> "if", "for" and "while" headers. This is a special case in my eyes.

    Ron> I wasn't that specific and it was related to Michael's suggestion
    Ron> the colon wasn't needed. If the need for '\' was dropped in
    Ron> multi-line block headers, then the colon would be required for an
    Ron> obvious reason.

But \ is used to continue all sorts of statements/expressions, e.g.:

    x = a + \
          b

not just conditionals.

Skip