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/XFZ5VH5DKIFJ423FKCTHXPHDONAO3DFI/) 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
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