Hi, I often find myself writing: class grouping: def __init__(self, x, y, z): self.x = x self.y = y self.z = z I hate it, and every time I show this to a Python newcomer I get that skeptic look. How about this for a change? class grouping: def __init__(self, .x, .y, .z): pass This is supposed to work the same way as: def __init__(self, x, y, z): self.x = x del x self.y = y del y self.z = z del z Currently the .x syntax leads to: def __init__(self, .x, .y, .z): ^ SyntaxError: invalid syntax I.e. it seems to me that there shouldn't be any backward compatibility issues. I'll write a PEP if I hear a few voices of support. (Otherwise I'll stick to my "adopt_init_args" workaround: http://phenix-online.org/cctbx_sources/libtbx/libtbx/introspection.py which does a similar job but doesn't look as elegant and is also quite inefficient). Cheers, Ralf