On Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:26:54 -0800, Brendan Miller wrote: > I tend to use constants as a means of avoiding the proliferation of > magic literals for maintenance reasons... Like say if your example of > FOO would have been used in 10 places. Maybe it is more pythonic to > simply denote such a thing as simply a normal variable?
But it isn't a "normal variable", it's a named constant, or at least it would be if Python enforced constanticity. Or constantness. Or whatever. > That doesn't > seem to give a hint that it shouldn't be assigned a second time. Absolutely. It's rather sad that I can do this: import math math.pi = 3.0 I like the ability to shoot myself in the foot, thank you very much, but I should at least get a warning when I'm about to do so: math.PI = 3.0 # use God-like powers to change a constant Changing the laws of physics, one fundamental constant at a time-ly y'rs, -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list