On Fri, Oct 15, 2021 at 2:32 PM Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org> wrote:
I suspect there won’t be enough support for this proposal to ever make it happen, but at the very least could you think of a different token? The three left arrows just look too weird (esp. in the REPL examples, where they strongly seem to suggest a false symmetry with the ‘>>>’ prompt. How did you decide to use this symbol?
Yes, I would consider a different token. I am not the happiest with `<<<` to start with. I wanted a symbol that evoked "this value comes from the left hand side of the assignment". Most symbols containing a `=` either already mean some sort of assignment, or look like they might become an assignment operator in the future. I went with an arrow, pointing to the target, but one that doesn't conflict with any existing arrow symbols. When this idea first surfaced on ideas it was spelled `@@` which doesn't really seem to evoke anything; maybe that's good as it can't be confused, but I was hoping for an intuitive symbol. `$` also made some sense to me as referring to the target, but felt maybe out of place in python. So perhaps `$`, `%%`, or `@@`? It doesn't feel important enough, even to me, to use a keyword, and soft keywords are out because of where it is allowed. I'm open to other suggestions. Regards, Jeremiah