Nick Coghlan dixit (2011-06-17, 17:02): [...snip...]
I already have too much on my to-do list to champion a PEP for this, but I'd be happy to help someone else with the mechanics of writing one and getting it published on python.org (hint, hint Jan!).
Nick Coghlan dixit (2011-06-19, 16:56): [...snip...]
What is needed now is one or more volunteers that are willing and able to:
1. Write a PEP that: - distils the core discussion in this thread down into a specific proposal that can be brought up on python-dev - explains *why* the default argument hack is undesirable in general (unintuitive, hard to look up, harmful to introspection, invites errors when calling affected functions) - clearly articulates the uses of the default argument hack that the proposal aims to eliminate (early binding, shared locals, performance) - include real world example of such uses from the standard library (and potentially other code bases) - optionally, also describe the potential "function factories" that could be developed based on the semantics I proposed (see Eric Snow's post for a sketch of how such factories might work once given a template function to work with) 2. Create a reference implementation targeting Python 3.3
(with step 1 being significantly more important at this stage - while the implementation can't be called *easy*, it should be a reasonably straightforward combination of the existing code that handles nonlocal statements and that which handles the calculation and storage of default arguments).
I'm not going to do it myself (I already have a couple of open PEPs that I need to make the time to follow up on), but I'm more than happy to provide pointers and advice to someone else that steps up to do so.
I could do it with pleasure, at least step #1 -- i.e. writing a PEP (step #2 seems to be quite non-trivial :), though for sure would be very instructive...). *But* -- only provided that it would be known and accepted that *I could not act urgently nor quickly* at all (I got a new job recently and even don't know yet how much spare time per week would I be able to save up during incoming months). Would that be OK? Cheers. *j