On 9/27/07, Adam Atlas <adam@atlas.st> wrote:
On 27 Sep 2007, at 21:47, George Sakkis wrote:
I guess this has very few to zero chances of being considered, even for Python 3, but this being python-ideas I guess it's ok to bring it up. IMO the del statement is one of the relatively few constructs that stick out like a sore thumb. For one thing, it is overloaded to mean three different things: 1) del x: Remove x from the current namespace 2) del x[i]: Equivalent to x.__delitem__(i) 3) del x.a: Equivalent to x.__delattr__('a') and delattr(x,'a')
I guess this has very few to zero chances of being considered, even for Python 3, but this being python-ideas I guess it's ok to bring it up. IMO the = statement is one of the relatively few constructs that stick out like a sore thumb. For one thing, it is overloaded to mean three different things: 1) x = : Assign x in the current namespace 2) x[i] = : Equivalent to x.__setitem__(i) 3) x.a = : Equivalent to x.__setattr__('a') and setattr(x,'a')
(Sorry for the slight sarcasm, but I hope you see my point. I don't see why the deletion statement should go while the perfectly complementary and nearly-identically-"overloaded" assignment statement should stay.)
Apples to oranges. I thought It would be obvious and that's why I didn't mention it, but getitem/setitem and friends use almost universally known punctuation; OTOH only Python AFAIK uses a keyword for a relatively infrequent operation. George