Rob Hague wrote: > The popular scripting language Python (http://www.python.org) uses indentation > as the primary mechanism for structuring code. [...] However, > I don't know what (if any) theoretical work this design decision was based on.
A footnote on page 80 of 'Learning Python' (ISBN: 1-56592-464-9) says it's based on a usability study of non-programmers. Hmm. I think I can see the problem. > On a slightly tangential note, my experience is that this feature of Python > polarises people; they either love it (which I do) or wouldn't touch it with a > barge pole. I'm afraid I'm parked close to the latter camp; perhaps I've been a non-non-programmer for too many decades. My problem is simply that, as someone who is used to manipulating or generating program source with various tools, I'd like to have the option of generating, or searching for, actual tokens that mean 'begin-block', 'end-block', etc.. In python, these tokens are various context-dependent quantities of white space, which makes manipulating or automatically generating python source code noticeably more awkward. Note that I don't object to the idea of indentation being meaningful, only to the idea that there should be no alternative non-indentation syntaxes. -- Frank Wales [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] - Automatic footer for [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] unsubscribe discuss To join the announcements list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe announce To receive a help file, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] help This list is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/ If you have any problems or questions, please mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
