> Well, the examples I saw looked like
>
> x = (if (if e1 then e2 else e3) then e4 else e5)
>
> Seems to me that those inner parens are there to separate the inner
> conditional from the trailing parts of the outer conditional:
>
> x = (
> if (
> if (
^
this is not there
> e1
> then
> e2
> else
> e3
> )
> then
> e4
> else
> e5
> )
>
> Whether or not that's what they are in a language parser sense, they sure
> look like it to the human eye.
They are syntactically unnecessary; they are mostly for guidance of
the human reader. If I saw a piece of code that read
x = if if if x == 1 then y else z then p else q then a else b
I would get a strong urge to commit illegal violence against the
author. If on the other hand I saw
x = if (if (if x == 1 then y else z) then p else q) then a else b
I might be willing to sit down and figure out what it meant -- maybe
with the help of a parentheses-balancing command in my editor.
> Tim> I'm not concerned about 21 bad arguments versus 20 <wink>.
>
> That 21st argument will be a little stronger than the other, because
> it will go something like, "Why can't we have delimiters for block
> statements? After all, we have them in conditional expressions."
> The reference, instead of being to another language, will be to
> Python itself.
Sorry, I still don't get this at all. A conditional expression is
still an expression. Curly brances are a statement-level concept.
What am I missing? Where is the similarity between the use of { } and
( ) in C/Java/C++/Perl?
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
RetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue
Search and Browse the WWW like it's 1997 | Search results from DuckDuckGo
HTML:
3.2
| Encoding:
UTF-8
| Version:
0.7.4