I am new to python. I have a few questions coming from an armature!

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu>:

> On 8/17/2016 2:39 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> "If I finish work on on time, go to the movies, otherwise just go home."
> is also real English syntax, and to me, more graceful.  It is certainly
> more neutral among the alternatives.  The inverted version implies a
> clear preference for the first alternative.
>
> It would be an interesting exercise to see which order for ternary
> expressions is more common in some large corpus of English text.

Python's ternary expression has a distinct Perl flavor to it. However,
the problem with the "then" keyword was valid. Also, Python's
comprehensions already had a postfix "if".

Personally, I'd normally steer clear of ternary conditionals both in C
and Python.

This reminds me of a discussion I had yesterday about why Scheme can't
implement a proper try/finally construct. That's because Scheme supports
continuations; nothing is really final. Python would gain a similar
power if there were a way to cancel exceptions:

     try:
         do_something()
     except ValueError:
         retry 123

where:

     def do_something():
         def_value = raise ValueError
         a += def_value


What Python would then need is a try/nevermind:

     resource = grab_it()
     while True:
          try:
               resource.operate()
          finally:
               resource.release()
               break
          nevermind:
               resource.take_back()


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