Is PEP-8 a Code or More of a Guideline?

[Tim Roberts]

Carl Banks <pavlovevidence at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>Identifiers should just allow spaces.
>
>first element.get item(selected value)
>
>This is not a joke.  I don't mean Python should necessarily do this
>(though it could be done without any ambiguity or backward
>incompatibility: there is currently nowhere in Python where two
>identifiers can be separated by only a space), but new languages
>should be designed to allow it.

That's an interesting idea.  It would, perhaps, allow you to write programs
that read more like prose.

However, it would certainly make the parser more complicated, because it
could no longer be context-insensitive.  For example, if I had identifiers
called "mine" and "not mine", how would it parse this:

    if not mine:
-- 
Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.