allow line break at operators

[Teemu Likonen]

* 2011-08-14T09:34:26+01:00 * Chris Angelico wrote:

> Some day, I'd like to play around with a language where everything's
> an expression and yet it doesn't look like LISP - just for the fun of
> it. It probably won't be any more useful for real world coding, but
> it'd be fun to tinker with.

Of course it's a useful feature. Basically you can put any Lisp code in
the world in the place of a Lisp expression.


    (setf variable (handler-case (some-code)
                     (foo-error () "value 1")
                     (bar-error () "value 2")))


is something like


    variable = try:
                   return some_code()
               except FooError:
                   return "value 1"
               except BarError:
                   return "value 2"


Sure, it's not a necessary feature. All we need is the machine language,
but other than that there are differences in how languages let
programmers express themselves. The above example emphasizes that
"'variable' is being assigned". The "how" part gets less weight. If we
put the assignment inside the handler-case or try-except forms we get
the same result technically but the variable assignment becomes more
hidden and is repeated, possibly several times.

I understand that Python philosophy does not value freedom of expression
that much. It values a general Pythonic rule which must obeyed and is
called "readability". Other languages give too little or too much
freedom. :-)