PEP 679 -- Allow parentheses in assert statements

[guido (Guido van Rossum)]

@h-vetinari

Finally, it’s also easy to refactor into a version that supports 3.7-3.11 by creating temporaries for the condition & the message so that the statement version can be used. I think that in many cases it could end up looking like this.

-assert (really_long_boolean_condition_that_needs_to_be_checked,
-        "even_longer_message_that_should_be_shown_when_assertion_fails")
+cond = really_long_boolean_condition_that_needs_to_be_checked
+msg = "even_longer_message_that_should_be_shown_when_assertion_fails"
+if PY311:
+    # assert-with-braces only supported for python 3.11+
+    assert(cond, msg)
+else:
+    assert cond, msg

which would already prepares for an easy clean-up once 3.11 becomes the lowest-supported version.

This is preposterous. The condition should not be evaluated at all if -O is given. If you want code that works with all Python versions you can write

assert long_condition, \
    long_message

or you can write

assert (
    long_condition
), (
    long_message
)

There is no need for temporary variables or for a Python version check.

(And don’t tell me “PEP 8 discourages backslashes”. It also says “When in doubt, you should use your best judgment.”)