Guido> Problem with this is that there's currently lots of code out Guido> there that was recently modified to read Guido> try: Guido> True Guido> except NameError: Guido> True = 1 Guido> False = 0 Guido> That would become a syntax error if True/False were true Guido> constants. :-(
Hmmm... Those code blocks would only be executed on older versions of the interpreter. Is there some way to use that knowledge to finesse the problem? It would be a real hack, but if the compiler recognized precisely the above construct (or at least assignment in an except block guarded by NameError), it could shut up about the assignment.
Would it be simpler to institute a special rule that True = 1 is silently ignored, but True = anything else generates an error message? Or am I overlooking something important? If you want to handle assigning to True an expression whose value is known only at run time, translate it into if expression != 1 : raise Exception, "Attempt to assign invalid value to True" which would give a run-time error without costing cycles anywhere else. Paul Hughett