from future import pass_function

[Ulrich Eckhardt]

Am 26.07.2012 04:38, schrieb Steven D'Aprano:
> The examples of pass-as-a-function shown by the Original Poster don't
> give any clue of what advantage there is to make pass a function.

Just read the text, it just struck me how similar pass and print are, 
i.e. that neither actually needs to be a keyword. In some cases, I would 
rather use "return" to replace "pass" though.


> It appears that the only reason for this suggested change is that he
> would rather write "pass()" instead of "pass", possibly because he
> thinks it looks cool.

I have no idea where you got the "cool" from, it is not in my posting. I 
stated clearly that "I just had an idea", which should signal that I 
haven't thought about this for any extended period of time. Then I asked 
"What do you think?" exactly because I wanted to discuss this. No need 
to get defensive. ;)


> (Actually, I reckon that what is driving this idea is that the OP is a
> beginner, and he's got a syntax error a few times from writing "pass()",
> and so he thought it would be easier to force other people to change tens
> or hundreds of thousands of Python programs to use "pass()" instead of
> "pass" than to just learn to stop putting parentheses after it.

So, and in order to force people to write parens or break their code I 
have considered the possibility of importing that feature from 
__future__ for those people that want it? Seriously, Steven, as much as 
I like your regular contributions here, this time you had better logged 
off and taken a walk, because you come across as _very_ arrogant here.


> But of course I could be wrong. Ulrich, if you are still reading this, if
> you have good examples for how pass as a function would actually be
> better, and how it will let you do things in Python that can't easily be
> done now, I'm very interested to hear them. Who knows, if the idea is
> good enough, some day it may even happen.

No there is nothing that you strictly need a pass() function for.


In summary, after reading this thread I have a lot of good arguments 
against this idea and few arguments supporting the idea. In any case I 
have many more arguments than those that I came up with myself, which is 
exactly what I asked for.


Thanks to all that took part in this discussion!

Uli