Why is "as" not a keyword?

[Rainer Deyke]

"Jesse W" <jessw at loop.com> wrote in message news:3A679717.1328 at loop.com...
> Most people know about the functionality of the import statement that
> lets you import something under a differnt name.  It uses the word "as"
> to tell the interpreter.  Why is "as" not a keyword?  Other flag parts
> of commands are keywords, like "in", or "from". Why not "as"?
> Currently, it seems to me to be confusing when you type
> import foo as bar
>  in IDLE, and import lights up as a keyword, but "as", which has to be
> there and is clearly part of the syntax, does not.  If this question has
> been answered already, pardon me; I have not seen the answer anywhere.

There are two issues here: whether or not 'as' should be a keyword, and
whether or not IDLE should highlight it.

On the first issue: 'as' was added to the language fairly recently.  There
could still be legacy code which uses 'as' as a variable name.  If 'as' was
a keyword, this code would break.  The way things currently are, legacy code
merely becomes confusing.

On the second issue: I think it should, personally.  It would be even if
IDLE only highlighted 'as' where it is used as a keyword.  For example, in
'import as as as', only the middle 'as' should be highlighted.  But I don't
use IDLE, so it's really a non-issue to me.


--
Rainer Deyke (root at rainerdeyke.com)
Shareware computer games           -           http://rainerdeyke.com
"In ihren Reihen zu stehen heisst unter Feinden zu kaempfen" - Abigor