I guess this has very few to zero chances of being considered, even for Python 3, but this being python-ideas I guess it's ok to bring it up. IMO the del statement is one of the relatively few constructs that stick out like a sore thumb. For one thing, it is overloaded to mean three different things: 1) del x: Remove x from the current namespace 2) del x[i]: Equivalent to x.__delitem__(i) 3) del x.a: Equivalent to x.__delattr__('a') and delattr(x,'a') Here I am mostly arguing for removing the last two; the first could also be removed if/when Python gets block namespaces, but it is orthogonal to the others. I don't see the point of complicating the lexer and the grammar with an extra keyword and statement for something that is typically handled by a method (my preference), or at least a generic (bulitin) function like len(). The last case is especially superfluous given that there is both a special method and a generic builtin (delattr) that does the same thing. Neither item nor attribute deletion are so pervasive to be granted special treatment at the language level. I wonder if this was considered and rejected in the Py3K discussions; PEP 3099 doesn't mention anything about it. George