[Python-Dev] Extended Function syntax (original) (raw)

Alex Martelli aleax@aleax.it
Mon, 3 Feb 2003 16:21:00 +0100

On Monday 03 February 2003 04:06 pm, Bernhard Herzog wrote: ...

IMO whether with should allow assignment is really completely independed of "with". It's just the general design questions of whether to have assignment expressions at all.

M own O is drastically different: I'm quite happy to have no assignment in expressions -- I think "with" SHOULD be able to bind a variable, though, much like, say, "for" should (and does), because MOST of the time you DO want that variable available in the body. Not ALL of the time, just like you sometimes have, say: for i in range(5)... and don't care at all about 'i' in the body, but just need to repeat something five times. But I'd rather make some form of binding MANDATORY in "with", as it is in "for", rather than forbid it.

If the "with blah = bloh:" sugar is not acceptable, I'd settle for ALMOST anything that has these semantics... ALMOST because the "with bloh: (blah):" kinds of thingies I've seen proposed on this thread strike me as weird (having the bound name AFTER the expression to which it's bound, and no clear indication at all that a binding is taking place -- maybe it's just the fact that it's so unusual in Python, but, do we really need those traits...?).

Alex