[Python-ideas] Making colons optional?

[Riobard Zhan]

On 6-Feb-09, at 3:47 AM, Ben Finney wrote:

> Riobard Zhan <yaogzhan at gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On 5-Feb-09, at 6:10 PM, Ben Finney wrote:
>>
>>> If they are optional, and some significant proportion of coders
>>> stop using them to introduce a suite, then they entirely lose
>>> their strong association with “here comes a suite” that is the
>>> main benefit of having them as complulsory syntax.
>>
>> Your strong association with "here comes a suite" should come from
>> indentation, that's how Python works.
>
> We're going around in circles: I've already demonstrated that there is
> plenty of indentation changes in Python code that *isn't* associated
> with here-comes-a-suite.
>
>> Or you should fallback to opening and ending braces like Java/C (or
>> even old school begin-end keywords) if you fail to do so.
>
> Why? I already have indentation plus here-comes-a-suite colons in
> Python.


Why do you want a strong association with "here comes a suite" coming  
from colons? Why don't you want a strong association with "here comes  
a statement" coming from semicolons? Can you explain the inconsistency?