"David Baelde" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Well, thanks for the answers. I guess the fact is that python does not > want to be a functional programming language.
Correct. Python is a procedural, functional, OO language. > I agree that statements as expressions could allow obscure code. Guido considered (and, I presume, still considers) the distinction between statement and expression to be a feature, not a wart. Most Python functions do things that in Lisp require 'special forms' (or builtin macros, or whatever, in a particular version) with special quoting rules. For instance, if assignment were done in an expression, the targets would have to be quoted to avoid having them evaluated. Or the assignment expression would have to be a 'special expression' that did not evaluate all its terms (like setq in some (just older?) lisps). In Python, that 'special expression', with its 'quote, don't evaluate, targets' rule, is a statement! >The design of programming languages is a complicated thing... To make everything hang together, yes. Terry J. Reedy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
