I think it could be ambiguous in certain situations. Let's say I wanted to conditionally set a variable to one of two negative constants. In the current syntax,

I think it could be ambiguous in certain situations. Let's say I wanted to conditionally set a variable to one of two negative constants. In the current syntax, that would look like: x = -1 if y else -2 However, with your syntax, it would look like: x = if y -1 else -2 Which could be possibly confused with trying to subtract 1 from y.