The current grammar for decorators is

decorator ::=  "@" dotted_name ["(" [argument_list [","]] ")"] NEWLINE

This restricts the decorator syntax to dotted names with an optional call with an argument list:

@spam.eggs
def f():
    ...

@ham('foo, 'bar')
def g():
    ...

I love the amount of generality and abstraction in Python, but I think this is a place where there could be more of that: I think arbitrary expressions should be allowed; the value of that expression is what gets used as the decorator, using its call method (raising TypeError if the object is not callable). This would allow things like:

@(lambda x: x)
def f():
    ...

(this currently raises a SyntaxError).

Note that I didn’t come up with this because I have a particular application in mind, it just irks me that this isn’t possible in Python :-) ! Here is a perhaps slightly more stimulating example:

@(lambda factory: factory())
def foo():
    # this is a one-use factory for real_foo
    call_count = 0  # essentially a static variable

    def real_foo():
        nonlocal call_count
        call_count += 1
        return call_count

    return real_foo

This is more a “purity” thing than a “practicality” thing, but I don’t think it has any negative effects on practicality or on the usual use of decorators.