Dennis, You make a good point, that is what I though first. Semantically I thought a comma after **kw as in ..., **kw,) doesn't make sense because there is nothing that could follow **kw except the ')'. But then trying some other cases (see the previous posts for my examples) I noticed that commas aren't allowed after *pos_args also. For example if ...., *pos_args,) would be an error BUT stuff could follow *pos_args and that could be **kw as in ..., *pos_args,**kw).
In other words the behavior is not consistent. So it seems that 3 things could happen with this: 1) Not allow commas after **kw only. Allow them in any other case, because semantically 'stuff' could possibly follow. 2) Don't allow extra commas for all the argument lists. In other words f(1,2,) or f(a=1,b=2,) would be an error. But then do we want argument lists to be consistent with tuples as far as syntax goes? 3) Allow trailing commas after all kinds of arguments in the argument lists. This is what the documentation describes at the moment. I think this is more sensible. I understand that argument lists and tuples are not the same, but it would be nice to have a _syntactic_ consistency, as opposed to 'a surprise'. As in t=(1,2,3,) f(1,2,3,) f(1,*[2,3],) and f(1,*[2],**{'c':3},) should all be 'OK'. Perhaps more Python core developers would comment... Nick Vatamaniuc Dennis Lee Bieber wrote: > On 29 Jul 2006 07:26:57 -0700, "Nick Vatamaniuc" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > declaimed the following in comp.lang.python: > > > Roman, > > > > The way I see it, it could be either way. In other words if I can > > write f(1,2,3) and f(1,2,3,) I should also be able to write > > f(1,*[2,3],). It is a really small detail but there sould be some > > consistency. Either no extra commas for all kinds of argument types or > > Part of the problem may be that the * notation implies that the > associated argument is supposed to fill ALL other supplied positional > arguments -- so what is that empty argument after the , supposed to be > associated with? A positional argument /after/ all positional arguments? > -- > Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber KD6MOG > [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] > HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/ > (Bestiaria Support Staff: [EMAIL PROTECTED]) > HTTP://www.bestiaria.com/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list