[Python-Dev] Informal educator feedback on PEP 572 (was Re: 2018 Python Language Summit coverage, last part) (original) (raw)

Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Tue Jul 3 18:04:35 EDT 2018

On 7/3/2018 2:42 AM, Tim Peters wrote:

So if we had it to do over again I'd sigh and accept "generator comprehensions" anyway.  It's been an eternal PITA - and especially in the PEP 572 threads! - to keep typing "comprehensions or generator expressions".  Then again, if I had the power of Guido's time machine, I'd go back more, and not use "comprehensions" for anything to begin with.

Amen. I cannot make 'comprehension' in this context comprehensible without some linguistic twisting.

Instead we'd have list, dict, set, and generator twizzlers, affectionately called listwiz, dictwiz, setwiz, and gentwiz by the cool kids :-)

I learned the set notion, such as {n^2: n in N; 1 <= n < 100, n even} # math {n*n for n in range(1,100) if not n%2} # python as 'set builder' notation.

If we had followed the math precedent, instead of , we would have set builders, list builders, dict builders, and generator builders.

I half seriously think we should consider this for 3.8 for the benefit of future Python programmers as well as ourselves. Comprehensions that can contain assignment expressions are a slightly new thing.

-- Terry Jan Reedy

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