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Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2012 22:00:55 -0400
From: Dave Angel <d@davea.name>
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To: Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info>
Subject: Re: A desperate lunge for on-topic-ness
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On 10/18/2012 09:20 PM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Oct 2012 12:47:48 -0400, Dave Angel wrote:
>
>> I never use the backslash at end-of-line to continue a statement to the
>> next.  Not only is it a readability problem, but if your editor doesn't
>> have visible spaces, you can accidentally have whitespace after the
>> backslash, and wonder what went wrong.
> What, you don't read the SyntaxError that you will invariably get?
>
>
> # Python 2.7 and 3.3:
>
> py> x = 42 + \
>   File "<stdin>", line 1
>     x = 42 + \
>               ^
> SyntaxError: unexpected character after line continuation character
>
>
>
> Even if you go back to truly ancient Python 1.5:
>
> [steve@ando ~]$ python1.5
> Python 1.5.2 (#1, Aug 27 2012, 09:09:18)  [GCC 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 
> 4.1.2-52)] on linux2
> Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>>> x = 42 + \
>   File "<stdin>", line 1
>     x = 42 + \
>               ^
> SyntaxError: invalid token
>
>
> Honestly, it's not that hard to diagnose line continuation errors. It's 
> probably easier to diagnose them than to diagnose missing parentheses.
>
> The more I hear people dissing line continuation backslashes, the more I 
> want to use them everywhere.

The context was both C++ and python, and I got into the habit of
avoiding the continuation characters in C++, where the compiler usually
has a totally stupid error, if any.

it's been so long since I've used them, it's quite possible I never
tried it in python.


-- 

DaveA