[Python-Dev] Python 1.7 tokenization feature request (original) (raw)

Ka-Ping Yee ping@lfw.org
Tue, 14 Mar 2000 06:19:59 -0500 (EST)

On Tue, 14 Mar 2000, Moshe Zadka wrote:

On Mon, 13 Mar 2000 gvwilson@nevex.com wrote: > legal? This would make the following 100% legal Python: > > i = 0 > while i < 10: > print i & 1 > i = i + 1

Why? Whatever XML parser you use will output "i<1" as "i<1", so the Python that comes out of the XML parser is quite all right. Why change Python to do an XML parser job?

I totally agree.

To me, this is the key issue: it is NOT the responsibility of the programming language to accommodate any particular encoding format.

While we're at it, why don't we change Python to accept quoted-printable source code? Or base64-encoded source code?

XML already defines a perfectly reasonable mechanism for escaping a plain stream of text -- adding this processing to Python adds nothing but confusion. The possible useful benefit from adding the proposed "feature" is exactly zero.

-- ?!ng

"This code is better than any code that doesn't work has any right to be." -- Roger Gregory, on Xanadu