[Python-Dev] #pragmas in Python source code

[Fredrik Lundh]

Fred L. Drake, Jr. wrote:
>  > Don't get me started.  XML is not a language.  It's a serialization
>=20
>   And XML was exactly why I asked about *programming* languages.  XML
> just doesn't qualify in any way I can think of as a language.

oh, come on.  in what way is "Python source code" more
expressive than XML, if you don't have anything that inter-
prets it?  does the Python parser create "better" trees than
an XML parser?

> XML, as you point out, is a syntactic aspect of tree encoding.

just like a Python source file is a syntactic aspect of a Python
(parse) tree encoding, right? ;-)

...

but back to the real issue -- the point is that XML provides a
mechanism for going from an external representation to an in-
ternal (unicode) token stream, and that mechanism is good
enough for python source code.

why invent yet another python-specific wheel?

</F>