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Alex Hall writes:
And now Lisp bites me, because '::a' means ...
And a single colon also means something else in Lisp.
Yeah, and I already pointed that out myself in this subthread. I don't like these notations, and the conflict with Lisp (which I read a lot of) is part of why. My taste, or the existence of Lisp, doesn't rule the issue, but it's input.
Does it matter much what that notation means in a different language?
Of course it might. That's why we use the usual arithmetic operators for their usual meanings. :: is not a universally used notation, but if we can find an alternative that's even less used, why not use that alternative?
Python will struggle to evolve if it can't conflict with other languages.
Strawman. Nobody said "can't". The question is "better".
I myself am rarely annoyed by this issue, with the single exception of "self.foo = foo" in __init__() defs (which can't be handled by these notations).
It can be handled:
``` self.__dict__.update(**, foo, bar, spam) ```
I hope you're kidding.
And here is some actual code of mine using it:
``` setattrs(cls, text=text, program=program, messages=messages, hints=hints) ```
I once wrote code like that as needed; my point was that I now rarely need it. There are already more concise, clearer, less ugly alternatives available, at least for the cases where *I* wrote code like that. I can't speak for your needs, only guess. But these examples of function *calls* don't give me enough information to decide for myself whether I think there's a need to write them, much less show you how I would write the program without them. You can continue to write such code if you want to. The question is, should Python add new syntax that a lot of people dislike so that you can write code in a style that may not be necessary any more? It's not possible to decide whether it's necessary without seeing the rest of the program. (Of course "necessary" is a value judgment, not an objective and absolute fact. Still need to see much more of the program to decide.) Steve