[Python-ideas] Descouraging the implicit string concatenation

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, Mar 14, 2018 at 01:47:53PM -0300, Facundo Batista wrote:
> 2018-03-14 11:30 GMT-03:00 Stephan Houben <stephanh42 at gmail.com>:
> 
> > Op 14 mrt. 2018 15:23 schreef "Facundo Batista" <facundobatista at gmail.com>:
> >
> > I propose the discouragement of the idiom.
> >
> >
> >
> > What does that mean?
> 
> That we say "hey, this works but please don't use it, because it tends
> to a error prone way of writing some code, instead do this".

It's not error prone. It works perfectly. The error you are complaining 
about has absolutely nothing to do with the intentional use of implicit 
string concatenation. The error you describe comes from accidentally 
leaving out a comma.

Suppose I follow this advice. I spend a month going through all my code, 
removing every example of implicit string concatenation and replace it 
with some work-around like runtime string concatenation or calling 
textwrap.dedent() on triple quoted strings. And I swear to never, ever 
use implicit string concatenation again.

And the very next day, I accidently leave out a comma in a list of 
strings.

How exactly does it help me to follow this advice? All it does is give 
me a lot of extra work to do, by avoiding a useful and reliable 
feature, without preventing the error you are concerned about.


-- 
Steve