[Python-ideas] Before and after the colon in funciton defs.

[Terry Reedy]

On 9/20/2011 10:00 AM, Sven Marnach wrote:

> I actually *do* use the default argument hack for early binding
> myself.  My main points were that the current status quo isn't too
> bad, there are alternatives if the function signature is really
> important, and that the cases which require both using closures *and*
> having a clean signature are too rare to justify yet another
> confusing-for-beginners syntax.  (When I started learning Python in
> 1998, the language was praised for having a small language core.  I
> didn't hear this very often in more recent times.)

I have noticed the same. The big syntax additions are generators, 
comprehensions, decorators, and the with statement. The switch to 
unicode doesn't change syntax but can complicate text processing.
>
> Assuming a new syntax *is* necessary -- there is no objective way to
> decide this after all -- I don't particularly like the proposed square
> bracket syntax because
>
>   a) it puts the information at the wrong place. The first line of the
>      function definition is for the outside appearance of the function,
>      including signature and annotations.  Separating the internal
>      information on early bound variables from the signature is the
>      primary goal of the proposal after all.
>
>   b) it does not make the intention of early binding very clear.
>
>   c) it consists of a list of the form [i=i] or [tuple=tuple, len=len]
>      in most use cases, making it necessary to type every name that
>      shall use early binding twice.
>
> That's why I would prefer a syntax that explicitly declares the names
> that should use early binding, similar to "global" or "nonlocal"
> statements, if such a syntax is deemed necessary at all.

The problem with an earlybind statement in the body is that it is in the 
body, which should be runtime stuff. I would prefer something in the 
header. A semi-colon or other char would be sufficient syntactically:

def f(a; len, alist=[]): alist.append(a); return len(alist)

where a bare identifier like 'len' *means* 'len=len'.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy