[Python-Dev] Those import related syntax errors again...

[Guido van Rossum]

> Is it time to shut down python-dev?  (yes, I'm serious)

I've been out in meetings all day, and just now checking my email.
I'm a bit surprised by this sudden uprising.  From the complaints so
far, I don't really believe it's so bad.  The embargo on not breaking
code has never been absolute in my view.  I do want to minimize
breakage, but in the end my goal is to make people happy -- trying not
to break code is only a means to that goal.  It so happens that nested
scopes will make many people happy too (if only because it allows
references to surrounding locals from nested lambdas).  I also don't
mind as much breaking code that I consider ugly.  I find import *
inside a function very ugly (because I happen to know how much time it
wastes).  I find exec (without the ``in dict1, dict2'' clause) also
pretty ugly, and usually being misused.

I don't want to roll back nested scopes unless there's a lot more
evidence that they are evil.  Go through the PythonWare code base and
look for code that would break -- and report back in the same style
that Jeremy used.  (Jeremy, it would help if you provided the tool you
used for this analysis.)

I remember you complained loudly about requiring list.append((x, y))
and socket.connect((host, port)) too -- but once you had fixed your
code I didn't hear from you again, and I haven't had much feedback
that this is a problem for the general population either.

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