[vacri]

I always found it weird that python functions quite happily tell you that you're missing a colon, but can't 'just run' without it.

Excluding one-liner syntax, why does Python actually need a colon to define a function, given it's goal of being free of unnecessary syntactic elements? I'm only an intermediate pythonista, but I'd be interested to know if there was a particular point to the colon.

[cma]

It doesn't, it just is easier to scan. There isn't a goal of being completely free of syntactic elements, semicolons went because they were excessive and noisey, colons seem, at least to me (comparing with say, coffeescript) to make it less noisey.

[vacri]

Thanks for the info, all.

[Tyr42]

It's because there's a rule that every time you are going to start indenting more, there's a colon first. Since whitespace is rather invisible, it's a concession they make to make scoping more clear.

[heinrich5991]

A few "unnecessary" syntactic elements help find errors at "compile time". In Javascript for example, automatic semicolon insertion can lead to very subtle errors.