Actual USEFULNESS of old Syntax (was Re: New Syntax -- with an implementation)

Jeffrey Templon (templon@paramount.nikhefk.nikhef.nl)
Thu, 2 Jun 1994 10:08:29 GMT

You know, maybe another way to look at this is to mention what positive
things come out of the indentation-based syntax. This may not
have so much to do with Python itself as the Emacs Python mode ...

One thing I like is that sometimes I catch coding errors WHILE CODING
because the editor indents differently than I expect. If you
write this sort of line code:

#-> this is the list of valid test operands so far

operand_list = [ 'and', 'or', 'gat', 'not', 'true' ]

#-> open test definition file
#-> open FORTRAN test block include file
#-> initialize test-number array (for later compound-test verifications)

tsufile = open(sys.argv[1],'r')

Then you get the correct indentation, but if you mistakenly leave
off the ending "]" in the "operand_list" assignment, then
the "tsufile" line is not properly indented! A coding-phase
debugger!

Of course C people will say that Emacs mode for C has the same
property, which is true. But how much more complex will Python-mode
need to be to check for all possible syntaxes?

JT