[Python-Dev] Backwards Incompatibility

[Andrew Kuchling]

On Wed, Feb 21, 2001 at 11:33:34PM +0100, Thomas Wouters wrote:
>Besides from any real problems we'll see, the added wartiness (which is what
>the hypothetical howls are all about) does really matter. What are we trying
>to solve with nested scopes ? Anything other than the default-argument hack
>wart ? Aren't we adding more warts to fix that one wart ?

I wouldn't consider either nested scopes or the additional
restrictions really warts.  'from...import *' is already somewhat
frowned upon, and often people use exec in situations where something
else would be a better solution (storing variable names in a
dictionary instead of exec'ing 'varname=expr').  If we were starting
from a clean slate, I'd say accepting nested scopes would be a
no-brainer.  Compatibility... ay, there's the rub!

--amk