New PEP: The directive statement

Tim Peters tim.one at home.com
Sat Mar 24 02:23:16 EST 2001


[Joshua Marshall]
> Please, no more keywords.  It's unnecessary in this case.
> How about an interpreter switch:
>
>   python -directive nested_scopes fu.py

Impractical.  For a hint of *how* impractical, note that a few std library
modules in the 2.1 release require nested_scopes:  you would have to specify
the names of those modules on the cmdline every time you ran Python for
anything.  Now picture your own .py files on top of that, and twenty
libraries you get from other people.  Pure nightmare.

PEP 236 handles this stuff without a new keyword.  But it's limited to future
statements, and Python probably does need a general directive facility too.

new-keywords-are-better-than-syntax-contortions-over-the-long-run-ly
    y'rs  - tim





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