[Python-ideas] PEP for issue2292, "Missing *-unpacking generalizations"

[Ronald Oussoren]

On 6 Jul, 2013, at 6:30, Joshua Landau <joshua.landau.ws at gmail.com> wrote:

> The PEP is attached. I'm not sure if I've covered the basics, but it's a try.
> 
> If anyone knows how to get the patch (from the bug report) working, or
> where to find http://code.python.org/python/users/twouters/starunpack
> after code.python.org was deleted in favour of hg.python.org (which
> seems not to have it), it'd be nice to know.

As you already noted in your proposal the proposed changes to function
definitions are not backward compatible:

   def func(*args, foo): pass

Currently 'foo' is a required keyword argument, with your change it
would be just another positional only argument. How would you define
keyword-only arguments with your proposal? The only alternative I could
come up with is an extension of how you currently define keyword arguments
without having a '*args' argument: 

    def func(*args, *, foo): pass

This however is currently not valid (SyntaxError) and would therefore
make it a lot harder to write functions with keyword-only arguments that
work both before and after your proposed change.

Ronald

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