Rhodri James writes:

 > That's the clearest explanation of why "_" needs to be treated 
 > carefully, but I don't think it argues for the PEP's special treatment. 

That depends on whether you care about taking advantage of the
convention that "_" is a dummy.  In fact, _ = gettext partakes of that
convention: all the programmer need know about internationalization is
that non-English speakers might like to read the string in their own
language.  From her point of view, _() is a no-op aka dummy.

 > Those people like me who just write for ourselves and don't care about 
 > internationalisation use "_" like any other variable with a strong 
 > implication that it's a dummy, so don't really care.  Those people like 
 > you who care about internationalisation presumably avoid using "_" 
 > anyway, so the PEP's usage goes against your current instincts.

I can't speak for others, but I use "_" as a dummy all the time.  Of
course that means I need to take care to use a different convention in
code that assumes _ == gettext, but it's rarely needed in my
experience.

But if the use of _ as a dummy in "case _" becomes syntax, I can't use
a different dummy, can I?  Or can I use a different dummy (such as
"xx" or "__") at the expense of binding it?

With the non-binding treatment of "case _", I don't have to worry
about it.

Steve
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