On Fri, Oct 23, 2020 at 02:23:58AM -0400, David Mertz wrote: > See my very detailed posts on EXACTLY the concepts you discuss. > > "whether 'bar' is a name"? It is definitely a name, what you have no means > > to know is whether it has been assigned a value. I suspect you're trying to > > do the thing some people do where they insist on 'name' to avoid using the > > term 'variable' > > > I have no idea what you are trying to make "is a name" mean. In an > ordinary and Python sense, an unbound "name" isn't a name.
I think you and Random (and possibly Chris?) are talking past each other. At the level of syntax, of course 'bar' is a name. It's not a for-loop, or a keyword, or a float literal, etc. The language reference refers to things like 'bar' as identifiers: https://docs.python.org/3/reference/lexical_analysis.html#identifiers and explicitly gives "name" as a synonym. So from that perspective, there is no doubt that 'bar' is a name. At the level of Python code, identifiers/names are not values at all, let alone first-class values. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-class_citizen So within the universe of Python values, identifiers don't exist. Bound names *have* a value bound to them; unbound names don't even have that. I'm not sure why this distinction is so relevant to the discussion, but the distinction does exist, and I think that consequently David and Random are arguing at cross-purposes. David, I think, is focused on the fact that an unbound name doesn't even have a value so it can't be anything at all: unbound names are not things you can manipulate within the universe of Python values. Random is, I think, focused on the fact that name is syntactically a name whether it is bound or not, or even whether it appears in the source code. Is "Albuquerque" a (Python) name or not? And consequently I think the two points of view are incommensurable, a bit like centrifugal force. In some frames of reference, centrifugal force is very real, and in others, it doesn't exist. I don't think that arguing one perspective is right and the other is wrong is productive. But if we can't see both perspectives, we cannot effectively communicate with each other. -- 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/UK22KVDJEUJXPT5AZW55VLBZBZDNYMQA/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
