Paul Sokolovsky wrote:
> Use punctuation ("sigils") to mark as-binding terms. This choice still seems
> to be under-considered. (As in: it doesn't seem like many people, including
> the PEP authors, tried to say "indeed, what if?" and feel thru it. I mean,
> try really hard. I trust the "gang of 4" spent maybe whole few hours on that
> and delivered "no" to all us. It's still not the same as dozens of people
> trying it over a few months).
To anyone actually wondering how much time and mental energy we’ve spent on a
particular issue: please take a look at our tracker before guessing “maybe
whole few hours”:
- Issue #1(!), April, 29 comments: https://github.com/gvanrossum/patma/issues/1
- Issue #90, June, 84 comments: https://github.com/gvanrossum/patma/issues/90
- Issue #92, June, 33 comments: https://github.com/gvanrossum/patma/issues/92
- Issue #105, June, 17 comments: https://github.com/gvanrossum/patma/issues/105
- Issue #143, August, 7 comments: https://github.com/gvanrossum/patma/issues/143
(I won't judge anyone for skimming a bit; it's a *lot* of discussion. Do note,
though, that for months I was one of the proponents of store sigils like `?`
until I was eventually convinced otherwise.)
That's also not counting side-discussions in other issues, countless mailing
list threads, two competing PEPs that make many of the same choices, a video
call with the SC, etc.
I'll also add, for anyone considering choosing yet another ASCII symbol off
their keyboard and proposing it as a “novel”, “intuitive” marker: one problem
with most of the hastily suggested adornments are that they do not nest very
well, for even simple cases. Further, the fact that constructions like `p =
Point(x, y)` look exactly the same as deconstructions like `case Point(x, y):`
is absolutely intentional (which touches back on Guido’s “rhyme” comment last
night).
Very briefly, compare the current syntax:
```
case first, *middle, last:
rebuilt = first, *middle, last
case {"key": value, **rest}:
rebuilt = {"key": value, **rest}
case Point(x=a, y=b):
rebuilt = Point(x=a, y=b)
```
with (using your own syntactic flavor):
```
case >first, *>middle, >last:
rebuilt = first, *middle, last
case {"key": >value, **>rest}:
rebuilt = {"key": value, **rest}
case Point(x=>a, y=>b):
rebuilt = Point(x=a, y=b)
```
(I had to stop and think *hard* where exactly the `>` should go in `*middle`
and `**rest`. I'm not confident I made the correct guess, either.)
_______________________________________________
Python-Dev mailing list -- python-dev@python.org
To unsubscribe send an email to python-dev-le...@python.org
https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-dev.python.org/
Message archived at
https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-dev@python.org/message/7SJ2SOPRD6XOAISOYXONKXUKB3JMLYNU/
Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
