Alex Hall writes: > > And now Lisp bites me, because '::a' means ...
> And a single colon also means something else in Lisp. Yeah, and I already pointed that out myself in this subthread. I don't like these notations, and the conflict with Lisp (which I read a lot of) is part of why. My taste, or the existence of Lisp, doesn't rule the issue, but it's input. > Does it matter much what that notation means in a different > language? Of course it might. That's why we use the usual arithmetic operators for their usual meanings. :: is not a universally used notation, but if we can find an alternative that's even less used, why not use that alternative? > Python will struggle to evolve if it can't conflict with other > languages. Strawman. Nobody said "can't". The question is "better". > > I myself am rarely annoyed by this issue, with > > the single exception of "self.foo = foo" in __init__() defs (which > > can't be handled by these notations). > > > > It can be handled: > > ``` > self.__dict__.update(**, foo, bar, spam) > ``` I hope you're kidding. > And here is some actual code of mine using it: > > ``` > setattrs(cls, > text=text, > program=program, > messages=messages, > hints=hints) > ``` I once wrote code like that as needed; my point was that I now rarely need it. There are already more concise, clearer, less ugly alternatives available, at least for the cases where *I* wrote code like that. I can't speak for your needs, only guess. But these examples of function *calls* don't give me enough information to decide for myself whether I think there's a need to write them, much less show you how I would write the program without them. You can continue to write such code if you want to. The question is, should Python add new syntax that a lot of people dislike so that you can write code in a style that may not be necessary any more? It's not possible to decide whether it's necessary without seeing the rest of the program. (Of course "necessary" is a value judgment, not an objective and absolute fact. Still need to see much more of the program to decide.) 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/SPAV4PLQWXYBDNLWJZUNBNWXCR4B3FWO/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
