[Python-3000] Reminder: Py3k PEPs due by April (original) (raw)

Blake Winton bwinton at latte.ca
Wed Apr 11 20:34:15 CEST 2007

Phillip J. Eby wrote:

* Eliminate implicit string concatenation: "abc" "def" Sure, I use it, but if it went away, I would type the plus sign. Not a problem. And it would be one less thing for newcomers to learn, and explicit is better, right? But there's another Python principle here, I think... complexity of computation should be represented by complexity of syntax. We don't generally like to use properties for expensive computation, or methods for simple field access, for example. Putting in a '+' sign makes the code feel like there's more computation going on, even if the computation gets optimized away.

Given that the set of things the compiler can optimize grows at a faster rate than the syntax changes to the language, I'm not sure that that's really a principle. Yeah, sure, you don't want to hide, say, a reverse-dns-lookup-with-associated-timeout behind the creation of a socket (to take a horrible example from Java that's just finished biting me), but + isn't really a heavyweight operator, especially if you're thinking of (small-ish) integers, and if the compiler optimizes it into less than one instruction, then great.

I suppose I see the + case for strings, in particular, as being more similar to the + case for numbers than calling methods or properties...

Later, Blake.

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