On 07/18/2011 12:54 AM, ΤΖΩΤΖΙΟΥ wrote: > Jumping in: > > What if a construct > > xx(*args1, **kwargs1)yy(*args2, **kwargs2) > > was interpreted as > > xxyy(*(args1+args2), **(kwargs1+kwargs2)) > > (Note: with **(kwargs1+kwargs2) I mean “put keyword arguments in the > order given”, since dicts can't be added) > > This construct is currently a syntax error. The intent of this idea is > to help improve legibility. > > Example: > def place_at(item, x, y): blah blah > could be called as > place(item)_at(x, y)
Objective C does something similar. I don't actually know Objective C, but from what I remember from when I briefly read up on in (somebody please correct me), that call could, in Objective C, look something like: [ place:item atPositionX:x Y:y ] The idiomatic Python way for this is the following: def place(item, at): pass place(item, at=(x,y)) Your suggestion would open up an infinite number of different, mostly unreadable, ways to call a single method. This completely goes against the principle of encouraging there being only one way to do things. Multi-part method names (with fixed, non-optional, "split" points, if you know what I mean) are slightly interesting, but don't fit in, and, more importantly, don't add anything to the language: all the possible readability benefits are already provided (and trumped) by keyword arguments. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
