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On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 11:15:32AM +0200, Alex Hall wrote:
On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 2:48 AM Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> wrote:
On Sun, Apr 19, 2020 at 02:10:21PM +0200, Alex Hall wrote:
And notice that there is absolutely no difficulty with some future enhancement to allow positional arguments after keyword arguments.
[...]
I have an actual, concrete possible enhancement in mind: relaxing the restriction on parameter order.
What? Do you think that the current restriction is bad, and we should just drop it? Why?
No, I have no opinion at the moment on whether we should relax that restriction. I'm saying that the mode-shift suggestion: func(arg, name=value, *, # change to auto-fill mode alpha, beta, gamma, ) will rule out any further relaxation on that restriction, and that is a point against it. That's a concrete enhancement that we might allow some time. Whether *I personally* want that enhancement is irrelevant. You on the other hand, claim that my suggestion: func(arg, name=value, **{alpha, beta, gamma}, ) will also rule out some unspecified, unknown, unimagined future enhancements. I'm saying that's a weak argument, unless you have a specific enhancement in mind. Note what I am **not** doing: I'm not saying that your bare star argument suggestion is bad because it will rule out using a bare star argument for some other purpose. I'm saying that it will rule out another language change which people may, or may not, prefer in the future. -- Steven