Talk:Python syntax and semantics

This page needs a better name

Very little of the page is syntax, it's almost entirely semantics. It needs a better name. Otherwise, it's well done. 165.189.91.148 21:15, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Stupid examples

The example C function int foo() is missing a return statement. I assume this was supposed to be declared void foo(int x), and have corrected it. 202.89.153.166 09:35, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

List Comprehensions Out of date?

If i recall, the language was changed in a recent rev so that list comprehensions are no longer immediately expanded. --64.238.49.65 01:09, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, you're thinking of generator expressions. EdC 11:19, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

closure example needed

closure example needed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.101.166.15 (talk) 01:43, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Added, using the example from Closure (computer science). EdC (talk) 00:23, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Scoping?

Can someone dedicate a section to scoping? Does Python use static or dynamic scoping, or some other kind? indil (talk) 05:40, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

EAFP

I'm getting really tired of people regurgitating the so-called EAFP style of programming. As far as I can tell, Alex Martelli came up with this one for Python in a Nutshell, and it has been widely quoted disseminated in spite of the fact that AFAIK there isn't a shred of evidence that EAFP actually increases readability. It probably does increase performance, but I don't think EAFP would be as widely cited if this were the only claimed benefit, and there isn't any evidence cited that it actually does increase performance. Given that readability is highly subjective anyway, I don't think the statement "EAFP increases readability" is verifiable. The tone of the section needs to be less POV for EAFP too. Mistercupcake (talk) 01:23, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The perceived readability advantage of EAFP (i.e. using try/except rather than if/else) was certainly widely discussed on the Python newsgroup/mailing list long before Alex wrote his book. I do not know of any specific quantitative studies that provide any evidence (and doubt any exist), but the belief is pretty old and pretty widespread.

Actually, the advantage usually presented isn't really readability per se. It's more like the belief that programs structured with try/except promote better programming practice or a better way of conceptualizing the problem. That may lead to readability, but it comes from a bit different direction. LotLE×talk 01:32, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

EAFP does help when later Duck Typing as it promotes the use of less type/is-a checks and focuses on what can be done. --Paddy (talk) 10:30, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"the whitespace thing"

QUOTE
The term "the whitespace thing" is commonly used in online discussion of the merits of block delimiter styles, e.g. "Python - Indentation/whitespace".; ""The Whitespace Thing" for OCaml".; "Proposal: Official whitespace response".
END OF QUOTE

None of the sources seems to be reliable. I would remove them from the article as well as statements they support unless reliable sources can be cited.
-- 17c (talk) 02:14, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What sort of citation would you prefer to see for "common use in online discussions" than those very discussions where it is so used?! The sources presented aren't there mostly to discuss the third-party usage, but are direct examples of the usage (I could easily add hundreds of others, but picked a few as "typical").

I do, of course, know that (and why) secondary sources are preferred to primary ones (which one could argue those footnotes constitute). Unfortunately, for technical topics like this, primary sources are what we largely rely on, since there's not the sort secondary discussion there more often is for, e.g. political, artistic, literary, historical, etc. topics. For example, this very article has multiple citations to the actual Python.org website for various facts, even though that is also a primary source rather than secondary. LotLE×talk 02:33, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I removed a {dubious} tag that looks WP:POINTy at best, disruptive at worst. It seems pretty much nonsensical to claim it is dubious that either "Python uses the off-side rule" or "this rule is sometimes called 'the whitespace thing'"... I honestly cannot discern any sensible meaning to the tag.

The most I can make sense of would be the claim that the phrase "whitespace thing" is insufficiently notable for the article. Or maybe the claim that mentioning it isn't an encyclopedic tone, but that seems like reaching. I confess that I used to see the phrase more often 5 years ago of so, in Python discussions, than I do nowadays. I'd like someone else to chime in on notability though. LotLE×talk 02:42, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to be jargon and not notable. Good sources are also missing. 17c (talk) 18:34, 9 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

syntactic constructions

From the introduction:

[Python] has notably fewer syntactic constructions than other popular structured languages [...]

What does syntactic construction mean? Thanks, --Abdull (talk) 14:02, 18 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fewer types of statements/expressions, I believe. For instance, it only has 7 keyword statements: if, for, while, try, class, def, with. No C-style for-loop, no do-while loop, etc. --Cybercobra (talk) 03:52, 19 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not really true. There are also pass, yield, return, exec, print (granted, the last two have become functions in Python 3). Benwing (talk) 09:24, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think it refers to comparing something like the EBNF for Python and say Ruby or Java and finding that the graph for Python would have fewer nodes and edges. --Paddy (talk) 05:27, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]