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

[Jussi Piitulainen]

Ben Bacarisse writes:

> Jussi Piitulainen writes:
>
>> BartC writes:
>>
>>> On 17/08/2016 07:39, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>>>> Rather than ask why Python uses `trueval if cond else falseval`, you
>>>> should ask why C uses `cond ? trueval : falseval`. Is that documented
>>>> anywhere?
>>>
>>> I'm not fond of C's a ? b : c but the principle is sound. I generally
>>
>> [- -]
>>
>>> Anyway a?b:c was existing practice. At least the order of a,b,c could
>>> have been retained if not the exact syntax.
>>
>> The original was (c1 -> e1, c2 -> e2, ..., cn -> en) in John McCarthy's
>> 1960 paper on symbolic expressions, with an actual arrow glyph in place
>> of hyphen-greater-than.
>
> And BCPL (Martin Richards 1967) took the same arrow and comma syntax.
> BCPL spawned B which led to C, but in B Thompson used ? and : but kept
> the right-to-left binding.  I think the change was unfortunate because
> the arrow works well in various layouts and looks much better when
> chained (though that might just be my bias from being a BCPL coder from
> way back).
>
> <snip>

I share the preference but have never programmed in a language that uses
an arrow syntax.

Much thanks for the history. (To MRAB, too.)