On Dec 29, 2:23 pm, Steven D'Aprano <steve +comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: > On Thu, 29 Dec 2011 03:55:14 -0800, Eelco wrote: > > I would argue that the use of single special characters to signal a > > relatively complex and uncommon construct is exactly what I am trying to > > avoid with this proposal. > > This would be the proposal to change the existing > > head, *tail = sequence > > to your proposed: > > head, tail:: = ::sequence > > (when happy with the default list for tail), or > > head, tail::tuple = ::sequence > > to avoid an explicit call to "tail = tuple(tail)" after the unpacking. > > Either way, with or without an explicit type declaration on the left hand > side, you are increasing the number of punctuation characters from one to > four. If your aim is to minimize the number of punctuation characters, > you're doing it wrong. > > -- > Steven
The goal is not to minimize the number of (special) characters to type. To goal is to minimize the number of special characters which are hard to interpret at a glance. I would prefer : over ::, but both are a single special character construct. Adding those characters once more on the rhs is similarly, not an increase in the number of concepts employed; merely a more explicit form of the same construct. And besides, I dont much like 'head, tail:: = ::sequence'. I threw that out there to appease the terseness advocates, but to me it largely defeats the purpose, because indeed it is hardly any different from the original. I like the explicit mentioning of the collection type to be constructed; that is what really brings it more towards 'for line in file' explicit obviousness to my mind. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
