Caleb Donovick writes: > In class bodies it is easy to redefine what assignment means, in > every other context its very annoying, I don't see why that must be > the case.
It's because Python doesn't actually have assignment to variables, it has binding to names. So there's no "there" there to provide a definition of assignment. In a class definition, the "local variables" are actually attributes of the class object. That class object provides the "there", which in turn allows redefinition via a metaclass. Of course this doesn't *have* to be the case. But in Python it is. AFAICS making assignment user-definable would require the compiler to be able to determine the type of the LHS in every assignment statement in order to determine whether name binding is meant or the name refers to an object which knows how to assign to itself. I don't see how to do that without giving up a lot of the properties that make Python Python, such as duck-typing. Steve _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list -- python-ideas@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-ideas-le...@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-ideas.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-ideas@python.org/message/YCVLTM565HQR4JEI2RHN7Q275SRAKPHY/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
