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On Fri, Apr 17, 2020 at 8:52 PM Alex Hall <alex.mojaki@gmail.com> wrote:
But this means the reader could miss the star, especially with a very large function call over multiple lines, and if that reader happens to use that particular function A LOT and know the parameter order without having to look they would pretty easily believe the arguments are doing something different than what is actually happening.
Thank you for giving an actual scenario explaining how confusion could occur. Personally I think it's a very unlikely edge case (particularly someone comparing argument order to their memory), and someone falsely thinking that correct code is buggy is not a major problem anyway.
I propose using two asterisks instead of one as the magical argument separator. `**` is more closely associated with keyword arguments, it's harder to visually miss, and it avoids the problem mentioned [here](https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-ideas@python.org/message/XFZ5VH...) which I think was a valid point. So a call would look like:
function(**, dunder, invert, private, meta, ignorecase)
All of these mode-switch proposals have the fundamental problem that you then cannot mix shorthand and longhand forms - once you go shorthand, suddenly everything has to be shorthand. I don't like that. The original proposal was entirely self-contained and has a very simple interpretation. Consider this example of actual production code (same one as I posted earlier): return render_template("index.html", twitter=twitter, username=user["display_name"], channel=channel, channelid=channelid, error=error, setups=database.list_setups(channelid), sched_tz=sched_tz, schedule=schedule, sched_tweet=sched_tweet, checklist=database.get_checklist(channelid), timers=database.list_timers(channelid), tweets=tweets, ) Aside from the first parameter, everything is keyword args, and there is no particular order to them. The render_template function doesn't define a set of parameters - it takes whatever it's given and passes it along to the template itself. If I could use the "name=" shorthand, I could write this thus: return render_template("index.html", twitter=, username=user["display_name"], channel=, channelid=, error=, setups=database.list_setups(channelid), sched_tz=, schedule=, sched_tweet=, checklist=database.get_checklist(channelid), timers=database.list_timers(channelid), tweets=, ) Each individual entry can use the shorthand, and it has a well-defined meaning. The order doesn't define which ones can and can't use shorthand. What's the advantage of a mode switch? This seems perfectly clear to me without any sort of magical cutoff. ChrisA