[Python-3000] Proposal: Metasyntax operator

[Guido van Rossum]

On 7/25/06, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> Ivan Krstic wrote:
> > Python already has
> > just enough programmable bits in place to invite abuse which emulates
> > programmable syntax; look at SQLObject or SQLalchemy for examples.
>
> Also, the "just use a string" workaround means that
> people are effectively doing this anyway, but in an
> uglier and less efficient way.

That depends on what exactly they're trying to do.

The problem with exposing the AST a la Boo is that it requires all
Python implementations to support the same AST. That's fine for Boo
which chose to limit itself to the .NET platform. I don't like this
for Python though. I'm not against having a library module that
exposes this functionality in a CPython-specific way but I don't want
to integrate it with the language.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)