[Python-Dev] Re: PEP 318: Decorators last before colon (original) (raw)

Paul Prescod paul at prescod.net
Thu Apr 1 02:11:20 EST 2004

Guido van Rossum wrote:

Why does <...> look better than [...]? To me, <...> just reminds me of XML, which is totally the wrong association.

I vote for << >>. The brackets and parens have too many meanings in Python already. <<staticmethod, foobar(baz)>> looks more like French than XML. ;) <<...>> has the same practical problems as <...>: no automatic line breaking, >> is ambiguous.

Sorry. I forgot that ">>" is also an operator. ;)

Anyhow, I just meant that if you find a pair of characters that are illegal today then many of the objections about abusing existing syntax would go away.

Paul Prescod

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