Reserved words as identifiers (was Re: Long names are doom ?)
Alex Martelli
aleaxit at yahoo.com
Mon May 28 07:46:11 EDT 2001
"Chris Gonnerman" <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.990997662.29840.python-list at python.org...
...
> specifically, reserved words which would cause a SyntaxError to be
> raised would be rechecked as identifiers. This shouldn't take much
> work on the part of the parser IMHO although it still looks a bit like
> a Rubik's Cube to me...
>
> In other words, I DON'T want to be able to do this:
>
> class = 99 # BAD
I don't understand the equivalence between the first paragraph
and the "in other words" second one. This example IS exactly
one of "reserved words which would cause a SyntaxError" -- what
in the previous paragraph you suggest "would be rechecked as
identifiers". But here you say you DON'T want to be able to
do this. So, I guess I'm confused. How would the SyntaxError's
you DO want to cause "re-checking" be distinguished from those
you don't?
The 'integrate with alien frameworks' advantage for un-reserving
of keywords does require the ability to use class=99, by the
way, although not (necessarily) as an assignment, but rather
as named-argument passing. A syntax convenience to avoid such
contortions as funz(*{'class':99}), of course, just as other
required "un-reservings" avoid lesser contortions of the
setattr(x,'class',99) and getattr(x,'class') persuasions:-)
Alex
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