New PEP: The directive statement

[Fredrik Lundh]

Aahz Maruch wrote:
> >except that "import" already is a declaration statement, of course.
>
> Depends how you define "already".  There is no current released version
> of Python (alphas and betas do not count as "released versions") in
> which "import" is a declaration.

import declares things, in all existing Python versions (hint: it's
an assignment statement)

the future hack overloads the meaning of a specific declaration,
inspired by similar solutions in other languages.

(fwiw, the original proposal was "import __nested_scopes__", and
the BDFL didn't seem to find that very unpythonic, given that it's
only there to allow people to do prerelease testing.  pre-2.2, that
is)

> So you're saying that "from __future__" is only to be used for this one
> issue of nested scopes?  I don't think so....

well, I do -- with the possible exception of cleaning up the numerics
model (also an age-old issue).

Cheers /F