On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 10:04 PM, Bartosz Tarnowski <bartosz-tarnowski@zlotniki.pl> wrote:

Hello, guys.

Python has more and more reserved words over time. It becomes quite annoying, since you can not use variables and attributes of such names. Suppose I want to make an XML parser that reads a document and returns an object with attributes corresponding to XML element attributes:

> elem = parse_xml("<element param='boo'/>")
> print elem.param
boo

What should I do then, when the attribute is a reserver word? I could use trailing underscore, but this is quite ugly and introduces ambiguity.

> elem = parse_xml("<element for='each'/>")
> print elem.for_ #?????
> elem = parse_xml("<element for_='each'/>")
> print elem.for__ #?????

My proposal: let's make a syntax change.

Let all reserved words be preceded with some symbol, i.e. "!" (exclamation mark). This goes also for standard library global identifiers.

!for boo in foo:
   !if boo is !None:
       !print(hoo)
   !else:
       !return !sorted(woo)


This would allow the user to declare any identifier with any name:

for = with(return) + try

What do you think of it? It is a major change, but I think Python needs it.

--
haael

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