On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 11:04:00PM +0100, Erik wrote:
Isn't binding an object to a namespace the same operation that assignment performs?
Yes.
So it's a type of assignment, and one that doesn't require the name to be spelled twice in the current syntax (and that's partly why I took offense at a suggestion - not by you - that I was picking "random or arbitrary" keywords. I picked it for that specific reason).
That was me. You took *offense*? For somebody who made it clear that you didn't care about this "self import name" suggestion, you sure are touchy to have it criticised. Assignment is the least interesting and important thing that the import statement does. Many keywords do an name binding operation, not just import, but also: for, with, except, def, class and most relevant to my comment: del is actually defined by the documentation as a name binding operation. https://docs.python.org/3/reference/executionmodel.html I'm sorry that the joke was too subtle, I did put a wink after it, but you deleted it from your reply. The point is, import's name binding is the least interesting and least important thing that it does. We could have defined import to be a function that returns a module object, or a tuple of objects, and left the binding up to the caller: # What If import were a function instead of a statement? math = import("math") sin, cos = import("math", "sin", "cos") That's rather similar to what __import__ does, but of course import as a statement is a much better design. Nevertheless, we could take away the name-binding aspect of import, and it would still be recognisable as performing an import: it would search the module cache, search the path, load modules, compile the code, create module objects, and all the other things needed to import a module. The name binding (assignment) is just an convenience. But take away the *import functionality*, and "import" is no longer an appropriate name. Why is it called import when it doesn't import anything? Because of the name binding? Well, these keywords all do name binding too, why can't we use them? self for attr self except attr self def attr self class attr etc. I'm sorry that my posting style rubbed you the wrong way and made you defensive, by I stand by my comment: chosing import as the keyword to do something completely unrelated to importing is an arbitrary choice, and we might as well choose del (or def, or for) and save some typing. If Python were the sort of language to use more symbols rather than names, like Perl, we could invent a bind to the left arrow operator: self <- a, b, c Well, that wouldn't work, because of operator precedence. But you get the idea. Or we could bind to the right: a, b, c -> self Make of them what you will. -- Steve