[Python-ideas] Backtick expression: similar to a shorter lambda syntax

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 05:56:17PM +1100, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

[...]
> > Variable names that are declared but have not been assigned to will be 
> > considered to exist for the purposes of the backtick expression.
> 
> Python doesn't have variable declarations, so I don't know what this 
> means.

Somebody emailed me off-list, and reminded me about type hints:

    var: int

but that's not a declaration in the usual sense of the word. It is 
officially an annotation. As PEP 526 states:

    "Type annotations should not be confused with variable 
    declarations in statically typed languages."

https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0526/#non-goals

At a global level, such type hints have no effect beyond recording the 
annotation for introspection purposes. Inside a function, they don't do 
that, but do instruct the compiler to treat the name as a local rather 
than global. What they certainly don't do is create the variable.

If people want to argue that such variable annotations are declarations 
"but not the same as in statically typed languages", that becomes a 
matter of argument over definitions.

In any case, whether they are declarations or annotations, at least now 
I think that I understand the intent of the quoted paragraph. As I 
understand it:

- backtick objects raise at creation-time if they refer to a 
  variable that doesn't exist at that moment;

- but if the variable has been annotated using the "var: int"
  syntax, it will be deemed to exist even if it doesn't.

To be precise, by "variable" I mean specifically a name-binding.

In the interactive interpreter I frequently create functions that refer 
to a global variable or another function, before I've created that 
variable or other function. Sometimes this happens in code in modules 
as well.

    def spam():
        return eggs() + 1  # But eggs doesn't exist yet!

    def eggs():
        return 999

If I change ``spam`` to a backtick object, it is (I presume) an error, 
because ``eggs`` doesn't exist. What a drag.

Especially since (unlike statically typed languages) this inconvenience 
doesn't even buy me any runtime efficiency. The name lookup for eggs 
will still have to be done at runtime every time I call spam().



-- 
Steve