[Python-Dev] Re: Call for defense of @decorators (original) (raw)

Anthony Baxter anthony at interlink.com.au
Fri Aug 6 20:15:31 CEST 2004

Michael McLay wrote:

On Friday 06 August 2004 11:57 am, Guido van Rossum wrote:

So I spent a little time futzing with python-mode and some of my decorator code, to try some alternative leading characters. Of the ones that cannot be used in valid Python code today (i.e. no backward compatibility issues), I tried ':', '/', '=', '*', and '|'. If the community can rally behind one of these, I think that would be acceptable. They all seem arbitrary, but so is the choice of '@'. :-) Why was ';' not on Barry's list? It looks like it could be safely used as a leading character.

One objection is that there's a number of contexts where ; is the comment notation. Another is, to me, the ';' just looks misplaced. Maybe it was supposed to be on the end of the line before, but there's a line break in the wrong place?

I also don't think ; is that much better than : - I think it violates one of the unwritten bits of Python Zen - Syntax Shall Not Look Like Grit On Tim's Monitor.

-- Anthony Baxter <anthony at interlink.com.au> It's never too late to have a happy childhood.

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