On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 1:50 AM, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: > On Wed, 11 May 2011 15:05:45 +0100, Hans Georg Schaathun wrote: > >> My concern was with the reader and not the writer. >> >> What could elif mean other than else: if? > > The first time I read Python code, I had literally no idea what to make > of elif. It seemed so obvious to me that any language would let you write > "else if ..." (on a single line) that I just assumed that elif must be > some other construct, and I had no idea what it was. It never even > crossed my mind that it could be "else if" rammed together into one word.
In a Bourne shell script, if ends with fi... case ends with esac... so file would end with... hmm. Yeah, I think it's best to know the language you're trying to comprehend, and/or actually look at context instead of shoving a piece of code under someone's nose and saying "I bet you can't figure out what THIS does!". Chris Angelico -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list