Re: New Syntax -- with an implementation

Thomas Kofler (kofler@ubilab.ubs.ch)
Wed, 1 Jun 1994 21:41:11 GMT

Guido.van.Rossum@cwi.nl wrote:
: Donald puts his money where is mouth is, and contributes a complete
: patch. Good work! I haven't actually tried it but it looks thorough.
[ ... ]
: Don claims that an optional end clause is no more useful than an
: optional "# end" comment. This may be true, but does his solution
: have any more value? I doubt it. If the user provides correct
: indentation, a missing (or unexpected) end clause is immediately
: noted by the discrepancy in indentation. If the user cannot promise
: correct indentation, the only solution is to require end clauses
: everywhere in the file (as does my "pindent -r" script).
:
Yes, it is true than an optional end clause is not more useful than
#end comments because Donald's solution does not allow to reliably
recover indentation (except if end clauses are used throughout). Thus,
I agree with Guido that the solution does not add any real value.

Personally, I think that there is no satisfactory solution to all
the problems related to newlines and indentation as long backward
compatibility must be provided. That is why I proposed to depart from
the current syntax.

Donald has done a good job, thank you! For me, it is another piece of
evidence, however, that Python is either left as it is, or another
non-compatible syntax is defined that solves all known problems at
once.

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Thomas Kofler |Email: kofler@ubilab.ubs.ch
Union Bank of Switzerland |Tel: +41-1-236 4567
Bahnhofstr. 45 |Fax: +41-1-236 4671
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