[Python-Dev] PEP 559 - built-in noop()

[Guido van Rossum]

I can't tell whether this was meant seriously, but I don't think it's worth
it. People can easily write their own dummy function and give it any damn
semantics they want. Let's reject the PEP.

On Sat, Sep 9, 2017 at 11:46 AM, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:

> I couldn’t resist one more PEP from the Core sprint.  I won’t reveal where
> or how this one came to me.
>
> -Barry
>
> PEP: 559
> Title: Built-in noop()
> Author: Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org>
> Status: Draft
> Type: Standards Track
> Content-Type: text/x-rst
> Created: 2017-09-08
> Python-Version: 3.7
> Post-History: 2017-09-09
>
>
> Abstract
> ========
>
> This PEP proposes adding a new built-in function called ``noop()`` which
> does
> nothing but return ``None``.
>
>
> Rationale
> =========
>
> It is trivial to implement a no-op function in Python.  It's so easy in
> fact
> that many people do it many times over and over again.  It would be useful
> in
> many cases to have a common built-in function that does nothing.
>
> One use case would be for PEP 553, where you could set the breakpoint
> environment variable to the following in order to effectively disable it::
>
>     $ setenv PYTHONBREAKPOINT=noop
>
>
> Implementation
> ==============
>
> The Python equivalent of the ``noop()`` function is exactly::
>
>     def noop(*args, **kws):
>         return None
>
> The C built-in implementation is available as a pull request.
>
>
> Rejected alternatives
> =====================
>
> ``noop()`` returns something
> ----------------------------
>
> YAGNI.
>
> This is rejected because it complicates the semantics.  For example, if you
> always return both ``*args`` and ``**kws``, what do you return when none of
> those are given?  Returning a tuple of ``((), {})`` is kind of ugly, but
> provides consistency.  But you might also want to just return ``None``
> since
> that's also conceptually what the function was passed.
>
> Or, what if you pass in exactly one positional argument, e.g.
> ``noop(7)``.  Do
> you return ``7`` or ``((7,), {})``?  And so on.
>
> The author claims that you won't ever need the return value of ``noop()``
> so
> it will always return ``None``.
>
> Coghlin's Dialogs (edited for formatting):
>
>     My counterargument to this would be ``map(noop, iterable)``,
>     ``sorted(iterable, key=noop)``, etc. (``filter``, ``max``, and
>     ``min`` all accept callables that accept a single argument, as do
>     many of the itertools operations).
>
>     Making ``noop()`` a useful default function in those cases just
>     needs the definition to be::
>
>        def noop(*args, **kwds):
>            return args[0] if args else None
>
>     The counterargument to the counterargument is that using ``None``
>     as the default in all these cases is going to be faster, since it
>     lets the algorithm skip the callback entirely, rather than calling
>     it and having it do nothing useful.
>
>
> Copyright
> =========
>
> This document has been placed in the public domain.
>
>
> ..
>    Local Variables:
>    mode: indented-text
>    indent-tabs-mode: nil
>    sentence-end-double-space: t
>    fill-column: 70
>    coding: utf-8
>    End:
>
>
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>


-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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