[Python-ideas] Another use case for the 'lazy' (aka 'delayed') keyword

[M.-A. Lemburg]

On 28.02.2017 15:46, Michel Desmoulin wrote:
> lazy is not only practical, but it's also beautiful. It reads well. It
> solves a problem we all have on a regular basis.

The only practical use case I ever ran into for lazy evaluation
are lazy imports, simply because imports cause a lot of
startup overhead. It's a case which the new keyword wouldn't
help with, though.

For the discussion, it would help if you'd write up a definition
of where the lazy evaluation should finally happen, which use
cases would be allowed or not and how the compiler could detect
these.

IMO, there are much better ways to write code which only evaluates
expensive code when really needed.

I don't see how "lazy" could automate this in a well defined,
helpful and obvious way, simply because the side effects of moving
evaluation from the place of definition to an arbitrary other place
in the code are not easy to manage.

Even if you do manage to clearly define when to evaluate a lazy
expression, the context in which it gets evaluated may
have already changed, giving wrong results, causing exceptions
due to missing information. Delaying exceptions can also
break the exception handling in your application.

PS: You run into the same issues with lazy imports, which is
why special care has to be taken when using these.

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