Suggestion for a "data" object syntax

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 08 May 2018 06:45:05 +0300, Mikhail V wrote:

> *Example 3. Two-dimensional tuple.*
> 
> data === T/T :
>     1    2    3    "hello"
>     a    b     c + d    e     f
> 
> is a synonym for:
> 
> data = (
>     (1, 2, 3, "hello") ,
>     (a, b, c + d, e, f ) )

Last time you brought up this idea, you were told that it is ambiguous. 
Using whitespace alone, it is impossible to distinguish between

    a + b

and 

    a + b


Can you see the difference? Of course not. That's the whole point. It is 
ambiguous. The first is a single item consisting of a plus b, and the 
second is two items consisting of a, following by unary plus b.

The same applies to unary minus.

That problem *alone* kills this idea.

There's also the problem that your syntax requires the *invisible* 
difference between tabs and spaces to be treated as syntactically 
meaningful.

[...]
> *The benefits is just as in above examples : readability and
> 'typeability' boost.*

But your syntax is not more readable, it is less readable and ambiguous. 
It requires us to care about the difference between two kinds of 
invisible whitespace.


> To present nesting of elements of higher than 2 levels, normal Python
> syntax can be used for deeper nesting:

So not only does idea not give us any new benefit, it cannot even do what 
existing syntax can do. It is inferior to what Python already has, 
ambiguous, and hard to read.

-- 
Steve