Guido van Rossum wrote:
On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 11:24 AM, Terry Reedy<tjreedy@udel.edu> wrote:
Collection-content displays are not, in general, constant and generally produce run-time code. (?)
Somewhat expanded, I meant this: Literals represent constants. They are sensibly interpreted into constants sometime before runtime, even if at a later stage than I thought. Displays, in general, can contain variables and expressions that can only be evaluated at runtime. Therefore, the object they represent must, in general, be evaluated at runtime. (The pre-computation of tuples that only contain constants is an implementation-specific special case optimization.) Code literals and code displays are, in this way among others, different beasts. Therefore, a device used for literals is not necessarily a good device for displays. The latter use needs more justification than the precedent of the former use. The OP has not provided such justification for an admittedly ugly device. -1 (which we agree on) Terry Jan Reedy