[Python-ideas] Inline assignments using "given" clauses

[Guido van Rossum]

On Fri, May 4, 2018 at 11:11 AM, Tim Peters <tim.peters at gmail.com> wrote:

> [Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com>]
> > ...
> > Using a new keyword (rather than a symbol) would make the new construct
> > easier to identify and search for, but also comes with all the downsides
> of
> > introducing a new keyword.
>
> That deserves more thought.  I started my paying career working on a
> Fortran compiler, a language which, by design, had no reserved words
> (although plenty of keywords).  The language itself (and
> vendor-specific extensions) never had to suffer "but adding a new
> keyword could break old code!" consequences.
>
> In practice that worked out very well,  Yes, you _could_ write
> hard-to-read code using language keywords as, e.g., identifier names
> too, but, no, absolutely nobody did that outside of "stupid Fortran
> tricks" posts on Usenet ;-)  It had the _intended_ effect in practice:
>  no breakage of old code just because the language grew new
> constructs.
>
> It's no longer the case that Python avoided that entirely, since
> "async def", "async for", and "async with" statements were added
> _without_ making "async" a new reserved word.  It may require pain in
> the parser, but it's often doable anyway.  At this stage in Python's
> life, adding new _reserved_ words "should be" an extremely high bar -
> but adding new non-reserved keywords (like "async") should be a much
> lower bar.
>

Do note that this was a temporary solution. In 3.5 we introduced this hack.
In 3.6, other uses of `async` and `await` became deprecated (though you'd
have to use `python -Wall` to get a warning). In 3.7, it's a syntax error.


> That said, I expect it's easier in general to add a non-reserved
> keyword introducing a statement (like "async") than one buried inside
> expressions ("given").
>

I'd also say that the difficulty of Googling for the meaning of ":="
shouldn't be exaggerated. Currently you can search for "python operators"
and get tons of sites that list all operators.

I also note that Google seems to be getting smarter about non-alphabetic
searches -- I just searched for "python << operator" and the first hit was
https://wiki.python.org/moin/BitwiseOperators

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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