I can imagine one difference -- maybe Magik is privately owned and the
source guarded like a major trade secret? Or am I underestimating
your intelligence? :-) In any case, if you have pointers (on-line
preferred :-) to information about Magik, I'd be grateful.
Regarding a better keyword instead of 'else', how about 'finally'? It
has the advantage that it's already a reserved word. I'm always very
reluctant to add new words, 'lambda' was the first new one in years I
believe. I could even introduce a syntax which supports both 'else'
and 'finally' very easily, and simply change all the documentation and
examples and library code (I have to think about an automatic fixing
script since the head of the loop may be arbitrarily far away).
One potential problem with finally: in another context it means "do
this regardless of what happens", while on a loop the finally clause
won't be executed when it ls left via a break (or return or
exception).
--Guido van Rossum, CWI, Amsterdam <Guido.van.Rossum@cwi.nl>
URL: <http://www.cwi.nl/cwi/people/Guido.van.Rossum.html>