On 3/16/2012 0:52, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 1:30 AM, Kiuhnm
<kiuhnm03.4t.yahoo...@mail.python.org> wrote:
Sorry, but I can't see how it would make it harder for humans to
understand. Are there particular situations you're referring to?
In a trivial example, it's mostly just noise:
if a == b # who needs the colon?
print(c)
The reader, for the same reason that above you wrote:
"In a trivial example, it's mostly just noise COLON"
and indeed I too used a colon for the same reason. It ties the lead
sentence to the following block without ending the sentence, but still
introducing a new grouping or clause.
It is *remarkable* how people take the colon for granted. It is so simple
and so obvious that they use it in their own writing often without
thinking about it, but because it is not strictly necessary to avoid
ambiguity in the grammar, they fool themselves into thinking that it is
"just noise" or "pointless". It is not noise, it is a hint to the reader.
IMHO, Python misuses colons.
No grammarian would ever write
"If you can: take the bus."
Natural languages are irregular while Python strives to be as regular as
possible.
BTW, I prefer
The matrix
[....]
can be ..... and it gives
[....]
which .....
to
The matrix:
[....]
can be ..... and it gives:
[....]
which ....
Colons should introduce more specific information, not all the
information. For instance, "I like many things in life: <list>" is way
better than "I like: <list>".
As you can see, I'm not an English native speaker, but I think I know a
few things about punctuation. We second language learners remember all
the wrong things :(
Kiuhnm
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