Re: [Python-ideas] Statement local functions and classes (aka PEP 3150 is dead, say 'Hi!' to PEP 403)

I don't see why the leading colon is necessary, actually. Isn't the presence of a bare @ enough to signal that a function or class definition must come next? It reads more cleanly and naturally without the colon, to me: return sorted(original, key=@) def normalize(item): return item.strip().lower() --Ping