Steven D'Aprano wrote:
The change required in that case is much bigger than just replacing '=foo' with 'foo=blarg'.
But you don't have to change the *syntax*.
It's still a bigger change than any automated tool will be able to cope with, and if you're changing it manually, who cares if the syntax changes or not?
I cannot think of any other syntax, certainly not in Python, which relies on a name being precisely one value rather than another in order to work.
Pardon? *Every* time you use a name, you're relying on it being the same as at least one other name somewhere else.
I exaggerate a little for effect, but it really does seem that many people think that any piece of code, no matter how trivially small, that is repeated is a DRY violation. But that's not what DRY is about.
You seem to think I'm using a form of argument by authority: "It's DRY, therefore it's undesirable." But that's not what I'm saying. Rather, I'm saying that I feel it's undesirable, and I'm using the term DRY to *describe* what I think is undesirable about it. Maybe I'm not using the term quite the way it was originally meant, but that has no bearing on how I feel about the matter and my reasons for it.
"Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Repeat_Yourself
which has nothing to do with writing spam=spam in a function call.
I'm not so sure about that. I've just been watching this: http://pyvideo.org/video/1676/the-naming-of-ducks-where-dynamic-types-meet-s... and going by the principles advocated there, if you change the name of the parameter in the called function, you *should* change the corresponding parameter of your function to match, for the sake of consistency. So '=spam' will continue to work fine after the change. It will also help you to keep your parameter names consistent by breaking if they're not! -- Greg