"Data blocks" syntax specification draft

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 22 May 2018 09:43:55 -0600, Ian Kelly wrote:

> In other words, the rule is not really as simple as "commas make
> tuples". I stand by what I wrote.

Being pedantic is great, but if you're going to be pedantic, it pays to 
be *absolutely correctly* pedantic *wink*

Chris is right to say "commas make tuples", and never implied that making 
tuples is *all* that commas do. That would be an absurd thing for him to 
say. Fortunately he didn't :-)

If your comment had been posed as an addition to Chris' comment ("By the 
by, commas also do this that and the other...") then it would have been 
unobjectionable. But by posing it as a correction ("Although, if the rule 
were really as simple ...") you left yourself wide-open to be criticised 
in turn for failing to be pedantic *enough*.

Of course commas can be used elsewhere, just as the use of "if" in if 
statements doesn't prevent us from using that same token in the ternary 
if operator.

In the context of the discussion (namely, the mistaken belief that tuples 
are created by parentheses, which we can often leave out) pointing out 
that commas are *also* used as separators in import statements, lists, 
dicts, function parameter lists etc adds noise but no insight to the 
understanding of tuples.


-- 
Steve