[Alex]
So it can't be global, as it must stay a keyword for backwards compatibility at least until 3.0.
[David]
Why? Removing keywords should be much simpler than adding them. I have no idea how hard it is to hack the parser to adjust, but I can't imagine how having 'global' no longer be a keyword as far as its concerned break b/w compatibility.
What am I missing?
[GvR]
I don't recall the context, but I think the real issue with removing 'global' is that there's too much code out there that uses the global syntax to remove the global statement before 3.0.
[David]
I would never have suggested that. Just that we can evolve the parser to retain the old usage
global a,b,c
while allowing a new usage
global.a = value
by removing 'global' from the list of reserved words and doing "fancy stuff" in the parser. Note that I very much don't know the details of the "fancy stuff".
Ah. *If* we want to parse both it would be easier to keep global as a keyword and do fancy stuff to recognize the second form... But I think somewhere in the mega-thread about this topic is hidden the conclusion that there are better ways to do this. --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)