Edward Elliott wrote: >> With this suggestion, mapping!identifier >> becomes fully equivalent to mapping["identifier"] > > Penny-wise, pound-foolish. Saves 3 character strokes at the cost of a new > special-purpose operator which only works in limited circumstances. To > avoid parsing ambiguity, identifier can only contain (as the name implies) > alphanumerics and _. So your ! is limited not only to dicts but to certain > keys in certain dicts. More complicated than it's worth.
Yes, it is limited use-case, but IMHO important one. The benefits are: 1. Code looks more neat, because IDE will highlight it as identifier, and not as string 2. Limited form of code completion (as in PythonWin) becomes possible 3. A bit easier to type, and to read Anyway, I don't intent strongly on this, I just like to see common attitude > So your ! is limited not only to dicts Not only to dict, but to any class with __getitem__ or __setitem__ methods -- Best regards, Alexander mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list