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On Sun, Apr 19, 2020 at 02:10:21PM +0200, Alex Hall wrote:
And notice that there is absolutely no difficulty with some future enhancement to allow positional arguments after keyword arguments.
We've already discussed in this thread that we shouldn't fear conflicting with other (real or hypothetical) proposals, even if they're likely. As I see it, the chance of allowing positional arguments after keyword arguments is basically zero. The restriction is intentionally there for a good reason.
Python already allows positional arguments after keyword arguments: py> sorted(reverse=True, *([1, 4, 2, 3],)) [4, 3, 2, 1]
And quoting your next message:
All else being equal, we should prefer the syntax that doesn't rule out future development.
I don't think all else is equal.
That's a fair opinion. [...]
Also, the way you're arguing against possibly conflicting with some future enhancement, I'm not sure why you'd ever support said enhancement, given that it would still potentially conflict with other possible enhancements in the even more distant future.
There is a qualitative difference between: "Your proposal will rule out this specific thing and should be weighed up in light of that" and "Your proposal could rule out some unknown thing that nobody has thought of, so it should be rejected!" I have an actual, concrete possible enhancement in mind: relaxing the restriction on parameter order. Do you have an actual, concrete future enhancement in mind that relaxing the restriction would conflict with? -- Steven