&gt;But retaining x += 1? That one has always annoyed me. Why does &#x27;+&#x27; (and friends) get this special form, but not my functions?<p>The reason is that I don&#x27;t want to see you escape your strings by writing<p><pre><code>  input escapequotes= input
</code></pre>
That&#x27;s why.  come on.  who wants to read that?