I think you're right about 572, although even that wouldn't have been enough without all the other stuff from the past, such as the unicode strings.
I often have to write things like this:
m = re.match()
if m:
do something
So I'm looking forward to the feature. I'm not sure you were fair to the process about the alternative syntax, though. They did give a well-reasoned explanation for discounting it.
It was discounted because it was less flexible, didn't handle as many use cases. True.
However, during the process Victor Stinner rewrote one large module using the new syntax as an exercise. We learned that ~95% of the time, only the simplest case was used, the form you gave above. The extra flexibility turned out not very important in real code.
We had a choice of ":=" syntax, duplicate but full functionality, and losing the BDFL, or ~95% functionality, language congruity, and keeping him. They chose the former.
Maybe Guido stepping aside will be good in the long run however, it was bound to happen eventually.
I often have to write things like this:
So I'm looking forward to the feature. I'm not sure you were fair to the process about the alternative syntax, though. They did give a well-reasoned explanation for discounting it.