2 new comment-like characters in Python to aid development?

[dbhbarton at googlemail.com]

> > I'm sorry I don't follow your logic. Meaningless to the interpreter,
> > yes, meaningless to the IDE or to me, no. I "_can't_ profit from these
> > conveniences"? Why ever not?
>
> Exactly, the ? is meaningless to the language itself, it's only a comment
> sign - ...
> ... it has nothing to do with _python_ the language, so it doesn't
> belong there.

But # is 'only a comment sign' as well, and equally meaningless to the
interpreter. But it's still part of the language, very very useful and
I profit from its existence every day.


> But for python itself, it has no meaning whatsoever, and would just be a
> character to overread, introducing visual clutter.

If you can highlight an entire block with a single character, won't
there be _less_ visual clutter than the current way of achieving the
same effect with # comments?


> So - if you want that feature, patch your editor of choice to deal with that
> comments, make them added and removed with a key stroke, whatever - be my
> guest.

Would if I could!

> Besides, I don't see how "quick highlighting of text" is something that
> needs to be persisted anyway - if it is quick, hightlight it within the
> editor until the file is closed. If not, it might be well worth a comment
> anyway why you think it needs special attention.

What we're talking about here is a form of 'alternate commenting
style'. With the IDE's cooperation it'd work on whole blocks at once,
it would highlight without disrupting the code concerned (at least the
way I'm envisaging it), it would be versatile (could probably be used
for as big a variety of purposes as the # comment), and yes, it'd be
persistent, which is how it would be different from any IDE-based
highlighting.

I think that'd be most useful. You don't. So far nobody else here does
either, and I've not persuaded anybody differently. Fair enough!

dave