One of the few Python constructs that feels less elegant than
necessary to me is the del statement. For one thing, it is overloaded
to mean three different things:
(1) del x: Remove x from the current namespace
(2) del x[i]: Equivalent to x.__delitem__(i)
(3) del x.a: Equivalent to x.__delattr__('a') (or delattr(x,'a'))
(1) is useful, or even necessary, at least as long as there are only
two namespaces (local and global) instead of a separate namespace per
block, so that's ok for now. The other two though, don't justify IMO a
separate statement.
I would strongly prefer (2) to be implemented by a normal method
instead of a special syntax and method. See the inconsistency:
s = ['a', 'b']
s.pop(0)
del s[0]
Likewise for dicts. Why not s.del(0) ? And just in case someone argues
"for the same reason we have __getitem__ and __setitem__", it is not
the same; the syntax for get/set (s[0], s[0] = 'a') doesn't introduce
a new keyword (or overload an existing one), it is pretty intuitive
and used across many languages. As for (3), it is pretty uncommon to
deserve its own syntax; delattr() or directly modifying self.__dict__
are good enough.
I understand that no more proposals are accepted for Python 3 but it
looks like a missed opportunity to make the language a bit simpler and
more consistent. Anyone else have an opinion on this?
George
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