On 5/30/2014 7:46 AM, Chris Angelico wrote:
Hmm. I'm not sure that "raises SyntaxError" is any less a part of the
language's promise than "evaluates to twice the value of x" is.
Of course it is. A real SyntaxError cannot be caught immediately.* When
new syntax features are added, breaking the raising of a SyntaxError is
*not* a consideration. On the other hand, we do not freely change
AbcError to XyzError even when the latter would be more 'correct'.
* IE, you cannot type
>>> try: ..
except SyntaxError: print('caught')
because the SyntaxError during parsing rather than during execution.
Also, consider:
for i in range(5): i*3+2
2
5
8
11
14
If you do this in a script, it's perfectly legal, but won't print
anything. So the REPL is already "chang[ing] the meaning of otherwise
legal Python syntax",
It does not change what is calculated. It adds introspection output as a
convenience. The minus is that one may forget that it *is* an addition
and use the shortcut when writing a script. (I know I have, occasionally.)
> and what's more, it's making None into a special case:
Which it is, as the 'zero' of the set of Python objects.
for i in range(5): None if i%2 else i
0
2
4
Practicality beats purity. If it's more useful to the end user for
something valid-but-illogical to have a new bit of meaning in
interactive mode, I say go for it.
I disagree.
--
Terry Jan Reedy
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