Guido van Rossum wrote:
[snip]
I'm speechless. If the ambiguous
[classmethod] def foo(x): ...
is rejected because it doesn't look like it does something to foo, how come there's suddenly a crop of solutions that have the same problem being proposed? What you write looks like a call to the function decorate(), followed by a function method definition. The "action-at-a-distance" that is presumed by the decorate() call is difficult to explain and a precedent for other worse hacks. Its only point in favor seems to be that it doesn't use '@'.
In my view, the strongest point in favor of a solution that involves calling functions rather than changing syntax is that the functions involved can be placed in the standard library rather than the interpreter. I believe a widely held view is that features can be supported by the stdlib do not merit language changes? Moreover, I have the impression that many people are clamoring for this feature, no matter how it ends up looking, because they simply *must have it*. Well, if they must have it, why wait for 2.4, when clearly they can have it right now? Jp