[Tim Peters explaining that you don't have to crunch everything up together]

That bothers me a lot too, but because the world really isn't running out of vertical whitespace:

class MyLittleToy:

def methy1(self): print 'whee'

@staticmethod def methy2(): print 'woo'

@staticmethod def methy3(arg): for i in arg: print 'woohoo'

If the syntax does end up along these lines (and I'm expressing no opinion either way), then maybe it would be worth explicitly telling people (i.e. in PEP 8) that they ought to put a blank line before decorators to make it clear? Yes, people should figure this themselves, but they probably won't <0.5 wink>, and it does make for ugly code. Same deal for "don't do '@this @and_this @on_the_same_line'" (unless that loses it's validity). (And if some other syntax 'wins', then a guide for using that couldn't hurt, too). =Tony Meyer p.s. Anyone else have a suspicion that Anthony checked in the @decorators to 2.4a2 as a sneaky way of getting more people than normal (all them riled up ones) to download the alpha and try it out? <wink>