Executive summary: Much of this is my opinion, and as a newer poster, your opinion is *more* valuable than mine (fresh eyes and all that). What I hope you'll take from this post is a more precise understanding of the customary criteria that are used in evaluating a proposed feature on python-ideas and python-dev.
Apologies for breaking the thread, but per Subject it's not really part of the thread. James Lu writes: > I could, but I don't think that justifies not having this > functionality in python standard. What's "this"? Note: >> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific >> than "Re: Contents of Python-ideas digest..." I had to edit the Subject. I'm going to assume you mean >> 1. Re: Unpacking iterables for augmented assignment (Matthew Einhorn) So. The Python development community generally doesn't require justification for refusing to implement new functionality. Rather, because Python has become a big and very complete programming environment, and a fairly large language, implementing new syntax requires that a feature increase expressiveness substantially. In the case in point, the destructuring assignments a, b = b, a w, x, y, z = z, w, y, x can be interpreted as "swapping" or "permuting", and AIUI that's why they were included. They express the intent better than tmp = a a = b b = tmp del tmp and I don't want to even think about how to do the 4-variable version without 4 temporary variables. By comparison, x, y += a, b is neither more expressive, nor easier to read, nor significantly harder to type, than x += a y += b as far as I can see. Note that this is the "not harder to type" criterion normally used in discussing new Python features, not something I've invented. > This is something I think most students will expect while learning > python, especially if they're implementing algorithms. I suppose this claim is unlikely to be accepted without testimony of several teachers of Python. In my own experience, I explicitly teach my students that the destructuring assignment is *for* permuting, and I have *not even once* been asked if it works for augmented assignments. By contrast, students with knowledge of other languages (especially C-like languages) invariably "just use" augmented assignments and ask if there's some spelling for increment and decrement expressions. Obviously, my teaching approach biases the result, but if nobody ever overcomes that bias, I do not think it is an expected or needed feature. Steve _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list Python-ideas@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/