[Python-ideas] Positional only arguments

[Ron Adam]

George Sakkis wrote:
> On 5/20/07, Steven Bethard <steven.bethard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 5/19/07, Arnaud Delobelle <arno at marooned.org.uk> wrote:
>>> - How would this work with name mangling and methods?  For example:
>>>
>>> class Foo(object):
>>>     def posfun(__self, __a, b, ...):
>>>
>>> * Would self have to be renamed __self? (As positional only arguments
>>> should come first)
>> Yes.
> 
> Ouch, hadn't thought of that. Many people find explicit self ugly, and
> now you'll tell them they *have to* spell it __self (or __s for fewer
> keystrokes) ? That's indeed ugly.
> 
> The semicolon proposal looks better, at least for this case:
> 
> class Foo(object):
>     def posfun(self, a; b, ...):

I would also say identifying the semicolon isn't a problem.  After all 
we've been telling the difference between periods and comma's for quite a 
long time now with no difficulty.  So it's more a matter of just getting 
used to looking for it in function signatures.

Ron