[Python-ideas] If branch merging

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Cory Beutler writes:

 > It may only be worse because you are not used to reading it. This
 > type of syntax looks simple once you know how the pieces work. I
 > mean, you know that having multiple if-elif statements will result
 > in only checking conditions until one passes. The 'also' mentality
 > would be the same, but backwards.

And that inversion is what underlies Steven's point, I think.  I see
your point, *but only if 'elif' goes away*.  Currently the
"hangindent" formatting of if ... elif ... else signals a series of
alternatives, as similar formatting does (as a convention, rather than
syntax) in many other languages.  This makes scanning either actions
or conditions fairly easy; you don't have to actually read the "elif"s
to understand the alternative structure.  With also and alif, you now
have to not only read the keywords, you have to parse the code to
determine what conditions are actually in force.  This is definitely a
readability minus, a big one.

It doesn't help that "else" and "also" and "elif" and "alif" are
rather visually confusable pairs, but at this point that's a bikeshed
painting issue (except that as proponent you might want to paint it a
different color for presentation).

There's also the "dangling also" issue: I would suppose that also has
all the problems of "dangling else", and some new ones besides.  For
example, since "elif" really is "else if" (not a C-like "case"), it's
easy to imagine situations where you'd like to have one also or alif
for the first three cases, and one for the next two, etc.

Python, being a language for grownups, could always add a convention
that you should generally only use also and alif at the end of an if
... elif ... else series or something like that, but I think that
would seriously impair the usefulness of these constructs.

I'm definitely -1 on the also, alif syntax at this point.  On the
other hand, having done a lot of C programming in my misspent youth, I
do miss anaphoric conditionals, so I too would like to see the
possibility of "if cond as var: do_something_with_var" explored.  Of
course Nick is right that automatic common subexpression elimination
(CSE) is the big win, but manual CSE can improve readability.