On 2018-05-17 11:02 PM, Neil Girdhar wrote:

For that reason, I'd like to make a more modest proposal to *only* add a verbatim versions of keywords as necessary, e.g., "\where" or "\given".  That way, there will be no temptation to use that syntax in any other place.  If a new version of Python comes out with a new keyword, say "abc", then all of the old Python versions can get a minor revision that knows about "\abc".  This would ensure that the backslash syntax is only used to avoid collisions with new keywords.

When 3.7 hits end-of-life, the "\given" (or whatever) can be deprecated.

-1. This would add an extra maintenance and mental ("which keywords are allowed as verbatim and which not") cost to the feature while limiting its utility to the one use case it's only incidentally addressing. PEP8 can warn people not to use verbatim names frivolously in handwritten code.