pep-318 questions

[Hallvard B Furuseth]

Sorry with the late reply; when I got back to clp I had the silly idea
that I'd try to catch up with the decorator threads before answering...
Anyway,

Skip Montanaro wrote:

>     Hallvard> The current syntax seems like the clear loser here too: No
>     Hallvard> whitespace above the function name.  Not too bad with a single
>     Hallvard> decorator, but several is a problem. 
> 
> There's no requirement that you smash them all together.  This is valid with
> the current patch:
> 
>     @ a
> 
>     # comment
>     # comment
>     # comment
>     # comment
>     @ b
> 
> 
>     def func(*args, **kwds):
>         ...

Which is even worse because one can easily miss some of the decorators
after locating the function.

>     >> Finally, it would require the introduction of a new keyword.
> 
>     Hallvard> Actually, I'm wondering about that too.  
> 
> Nobody has so far been able to come up with a single keyword that seems to
> connote "this is a decorator function that is to be applied to the next
> function definition".

I thought the main objection to a keyword is that it breaks existing
code; I wasn't talking about _which_ keyword to choose.

My point is that maybe the J2 syntax does _not_ need to be a keyword.

It should work to recognize statements that begin with one word and a
colon, and treat that word as a pseudo-keyword in that statement.  As
far as I can tell, that does not break anything: A valid statement
cannot begin with a non-keyword followed by a colon today.

That also makes 'apply' a candidate for the... pseudo-keyword, if anyone
still wants that one.

And if anyone wanted to, one could make 'else', 'try' and 'finally'
into non-keywords so they could be used as variables:-)

-- 
Hallvard