[Python-Dev] Informal educator feedback on PEP 572 (was Re: 2018 Python Language Summit coverage, last part)

[Chris Barker - NOAA Federal]

> On Jul 2, 2018, at 8:34 AM, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:

Guido has decided — and despite my concerns, I’m going to enjoy my new
loop-and-a half construct:-)

But a comment on this:

> comprehension are no more special than
> assignments inside any other expression. They bind in the current scope,
> same as always, and keep the sensible identity that these two
> expressions are exactly equivalent in their visible semantics:
>
>   [x:=0, x:=1, x:=2]
>
>   [x:=i for i in (0, 1, 2)]
>
> including assignments.

Sure — and I don’t think that’s confusing.

However, generator expressions ( why don’t we call them generator
comprehensions?) are a different story, as they may be run at some
arbitrary time in the future. This hasn’t been an issue (except for
the loop variable, which has been addressed) because:

1) Much of the time, the gen_ex is run right away, in-line.

2) There aren’t many ways to manipulate the local namespace in a gen_ex.

With assignment expressions, it will be much easier to manipulate the
local namespace, so there is room for some real confusion here.

So a real local namespace gen_exp (and comprehensions, for
consistency) would be nice.

However, that ship has pretty much sailed.

Will it end up being a common problem? Probably not, because (a) is
still the case, and := will be used infrequently, and hopefully with
unlikely to clash names.

And as for all the other languages that have assignment expressions?
Do they have constructs like generator expressions?

-CHB