[Python-ideas] Enhance definition of functions

[Ryan]

It does feel like Perl, but, what if there was a keyword after the symbol? It'd be more readable and not Perl-ish, but, it wouldn't confuse the parser(or at least I wouldn't think it would).

Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:

>Le Sat, 3 Aug 2013 01:46:37 +1000,
>Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> a
>écrit :
>> 
>> > In this context, you usually have one or
>> > two callbacks (two in Twisted-style programming: one for success,
>> > one for failure), passed positionally to a consuming function:
>> >
>> >     loop.create_connection((host, port), @cb, @eb) where:
>> >         def cb(sock):
>> >             # Do something with socket
>> >         def eb(exc):
>> >             logging.exception(
>> >                 "Failed connecting to %s:%s", host, port)
>> 
>> We can't use 'where' because we know it conflicts with the SQL sense
>> of the term in too many APIs. We're reasonably sure we can get away
>> with "given" without too much conflict, though.
>
>How about reusing "with"? There's no ambiguity with context managers
>since the syntactic context is different.
>
>> Using "@" as the marker character is also problematic, since the
>> following degenerate case will probably confuse the parser (due to it
>> looking too much like a decorator clause):
>> 
>>     @something() given:
>>         ...
>
>No, that would simply be forbidden. In this proposal, "@" can only mark
>names of parameters in function calls. We already reuse "*" and "**"
>for a specific meaning in front of function call parameters, so there's
>a precedent for such polysemy.
>
>> I liked the notion of "?" as suggesting doubt and uncertainty - an
>> element of "leave this undefined for now, we'll fill it in later".
>
>I don't really like it :-) "?" has other meanings traditionally: as
>part
>of the ternary operator in C-like languages (many of them), as a
>wildcard character in pattern matching languages, as a marker of
>optional matchers in regular expressions.
>
>Also, I really don't like the idea that "?" represents a full-blown
>object with attribute access capabilities and whatnot. It smells too
>much like Perl-style (Ruby-style?) magic variables. My proposal is more
>limited: it's a syntactic addition, but it doesn't create new runtime
>objects or types.
>
>Regards
>
>Antoine.
>
>
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