Nick Coghlan wrote: > I also think that if "=" and ":=" both target the same kind of scope, > there isn't enough new expressiveness introduced by the latter to > justify the syntactic complexity of adding it.
OK, but then how about introducing assignment expressions with the "=" operator but *requiring* extra parens (similar to how modern C compilers warn about assignment expressions without parens), e.g. while (obj = get()): process(obj) The semantics of assignment expressions could be exactly what I proposed for ":=", i.e. completely consistent with assignment statements. Assignment statements could be either left as they are or could be treated as expressions. That second choice would have consequences for interactive sessions: >>> a = 3 3 ---------------- The above would bring the benefits of assignment expressions in a minimally invasive but safe way. Moreover, it would not feel like Pascal! The only downside is that "=" stands out less than ":=" so that the presence of side-effects would be somewhat less visible. Christoph _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com