Pythonification of the asterisk-based collection packing/unpacking syntax

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 26 Dec 2011 13:51:50 -0800, Eelco wrote:
[...]
>> If your point is that parens are used more often than
>> packing/unpacking, that's almost certainly true, since function calls
>> (including method invocations) are so prevalent in pretty much any
>> code. But what does that prove?
> 
> That proves the original point of contention: that the below* is
> suboptimal language design, 

Well duh.

I was mocking the idea that the meaning of * is context-dependent is a 
bad thing by pointing out that we accept context-dependent meaning for 
round brackets () without any difficulties. Of course it is "suboptimal 
language design" -- it couldn't fail to be. Context-dependency is not 
necessarily a bad thing.


> not because terseness always trumps
> verbosity, but because commonly-used constructs (such as parenthesis or
> round brackets or whatever you wish to call them) 

Parentheses are not a construct. They are symbols (punctuation marks) 
which are applied to at least three different constructs: grouping, 
function calls, class inheritance lists.


> are more deserving of
> the limited space in both the ascii table and your reflexive memory,
> than uncommonly used ones.

Right. And since sequence packing and unpacking is a common idiom, it 
deserves to be given punctuation. That's my opinion.


-- 
Steven