What exactly is "pass"? What should it be?

[MRAB]

On 18/11/2011 04:34, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Nov 2011 18:18:11 -0800 (PST), John Ladasky
> <ladasky at my-deja.com>  declaimed the following in
> gmane.comp.python.general:
>
>> I'm trying to write tidy, modular code which includes a long-running process.  From time to time I MIGHT like to check in on the progress being made by that long-running process, in various ways.  Other times, I'll just want to let it run.  So I have a section of code which, generally, looks like this:
>>
>> def _pass(*args):
>>      pass
>>
> 	This is the equivalent of
>
> def _pass(*args):
> 	return None
>
Wouldn't "pass_" be a more Pythonic name?

> (functions with no explicit return statement implicitly return None)
>
>> def long_running_process(arg1, arg2, arg_etc, report = _pass):
>>      result1 = do_stuff()
>>      report(result1)
>
> 	So this is a call to a function that just returns a None, which is
> dropped by the interpreter...
>