pattern matching in python

[Tim Peters]

[Tim]
> ...
> Yup.  Guido has mentioned that he might drop the arglist gimmick in
> P3K, though, as it's conspicuous by absence in real Python programs.
> Or maybe I made that up!  It's hard to tell.

[Mike Fletcher]
> Curse you!

Curse me?!  I'm not Guido.  I curse him too, damn his perfidious Dutch
bones.

> My code uses the arglist gimmick all over the place, especially
> in the parse-tree processors.  Once again we, the people, are
> marginalised by the dictator perched on his natty red sofa in the
> palace.   Some day, mark my words, the people of the automatically-
> unpacking tuple arguments shall rise up and overthrow this
> tyrannical government!
>
> My people, rally to me!  They cannot kill us all!  They dictators
> cannot hold on to power forever!  They would not dare to strike us
> down if we all<pop>(urk)

Let that be an object lesson to other troublemakers!  Guido *loved* Mike as
he would a son; or perhaps as a father, depending on their relative ages.
If Guido could do that to someone he loved, what might he do to you?  Think
about it.

In any case, I doubt that sequence-unpacking in arglists will actually go
away.  So, like most of Guido's would-be usurpers, your death was needless.

feel-free-to-resurrect-if-it's-not-too-late-ly y'rs  - tim