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Overview
If a language provides convenient, compact shortcuts, then those shortcuts may be described as syntactical sugar, a term coined in 1964.
The built-in dictionary data structure in Python is syntactic sugar for an associative matrix/list.
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Syntactic sugar
Syntactic sugar is syntax within a programming language that is designed to make things easier to read or to express.
It makes the language “sweeter” for human use: things can be expressed more clearly, more concisely, or in an alternative style that some may prefer.
The term syntactic sugar was coined by Peter J. Landin in 1964.
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References
- Stueben, M. Good Habits for Great Coding. (Apress, 2018). doi:10.1007/978-1-4842-3459-4.