On Mon, 25 Apr 2011 16:26:47 -0400 Mike Graham <mikegraham@gmail.com> wrote:
Other examples, some more contrived than others, could be provided--some of these would be good names if not for their keyword status. However, I don't think I've seen a suggestion better than the current solution (or lack thereof).
I think the *first* part of this proposal - allowing attribute names to be keywords - provides almost all the benefits and few of the problems that were brought up. For instance, the "with .with.as as .as" goes away - the worst you can do is "with with_.as as as_", which is only slightly worse than the already legal "with with_.as_ as as_". I don't think it changes the cognitive load of someone reading or writing code noticeably - limiting it to attributes means you're limiting it to a namespace that's already visually and logically distinct from the namespace that keywords can appear in. In fact, that separation also means there are no backwards compatibility issues. On the other hand, the problem of wanting to bind external names (say from a CORBA ORB) should go away, because the names tend to be attributes of the external objects you are using. The objects themselves you get to name. Likewise, most of the examples from the standard library where the obvious name for something was a keyword were attribute names. This would fix those, but not let the first parameter to classmethods be class. The nasty problem - possibly nasty enough to kill this - are the cases where context allows bare names to be used to refer to things that are used as attributes outside the context: a modules global namespace and class variables off the top of my head. Using the bare name as a keyword would be a syntax error, but using it as an attribute elsewhere would work fine. Class variables can probably be worked around since they only use for bare names is to initialize them at class definition time, but module global are another issue. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/consulting.html Independent Software developer/SCM consultant, email for more information. O< ascii ribbon campaign - stop html mail - www.asciiribbon.org