Has anyone else ever thought that it might be useful to access a function object from within the call? I've come across this situation a few times recently, and thought it would be very useful to be able to do something like, for example: def a_function() as func: print(func.__doc__) It would be useful, for example, to record state between calls, or if the function wants to reuse its own properties (like in the above example). Consider a function which should print the number of times it has been called on every call def counter(add) as func: if not hasattr(func, 'count'): func.count = 0 func.count += 1 print(func.count) This could also be implemented using classes, i.e. class Counter: def __call__(self, add): if not hasattr(func, 'count'): func.count = 0 func.count += 1 print(func.count) counter = Counter() But this is much more clumsy, results in an extra object (the Counter class) and will be quite complicated if counter is a method rather than a function. The reason I've used "as" syntax is that it is consistent with other python statements (e.g. "with" and "except"), wouldn't require a new keyword and is backwardly compatible. Any thoughts? David