Hi,
It's becoming more popular in Python to have interfaces which are built around
method chaining as a way of applying operations to data. For example in pandas
is moving more towards a default model where methods do not change the object
in-place but instead return an altered version (or at least an altered view) of
it.
The major downside to method chaining is that it ends up creating long lines of
code which can become hard to read. The two main solutions to this are 1) break
down the chain and give the steps their own variable names and 2) split it over
multiple lines using `\` as a line continuation.
e.g.:
y = x.rstrip("\n").split(":")[0].lower()
would become
y = x.rstrip("\n") \
.split(":")[0] \
.lower()
I find the continuation character visually distracting, easy to forget and does
not allow for line-by-line commenting (causing `SyntaxError: unexpected
character after line continuation character`):
y = x.rstrip("\n") \
.split(":")[0] \ # grab the key name
.lower()
My idea is to alter the syntax of Python to allow doing:
y = x.rstrip("\n")
.split(":")[0]
.lower()
i.e., not requiring an explicit line continuation character in the case where
the next line starts with a period.
I've had a search through the archives and I couldn't see this discussion
before. Feel free to point me to it if I've missed anything.
Cheers,
Matt
_______________________________________________
Python-ideas mailing list -- python-ideas@python.org
To unsubscribe send an email to python-ideas-le...@python.org
https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-ideas.python.org/
Message archived at
https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-ideas@python.org/message/LWB3U5BTGC4CT26U4AB676SKGED3ZOEX/
Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
