[Python-Dev] PEP 201, zip() builtin

[Tim Peters]

[Tim]
> ...
> Guido would *prefer* to do this via syntax instead of new
> functions, but in  more than a year nobody has been able to
> dream up a reasonable syntax that's backward-compatible.
> That's not for lack of trying.

[Peter Schneider-Kamp]
> I thought the problem was that all the syntaxes implied cross-
> product rather than lock-step iteration. I can't remember what
> the problem for the semicolon syntax should have been

Precisely that Greg Wilson's test subjects read it as cross-product rather
than lock-step.  That leaves it backward-compatible but *un*reasonable
syntax; nobody (incl. Guido) liked such a big semantic difference triggered
by such a tiny bit of embedded punctuation anyway.

> ...