reading file to list

[Terry Reedy]

Rhodri James wrote:

> Computer languages are not human languages, but computer language
> constructs do attempt to map onto human language constructs to
> provide some measure of comprehensibility.  Where a construct like
> list comprehension maps very well onto idiomatic English, dismissing
> it as "ad hoc syntax soup" is just plain wrong.

Especially given that Python's comprehensions are taken from Haskell's 
which are taken from mathematics' set builder notation.  Also, care was 
taken to have a correspondance between comprehension syntax and nested 
for- and if- statement syntax.  Someone recently made a proposal that 
would break that correspondance and which would be 'ad hoc' and it will 
surely be rejected.

tjr