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

Russell E. Owen rowen at cesmail.net
Fri Apr 2 16:01:03 EST 2004

In article <20040402105535.0526c27d.casey at zope.com>, Casey Duncan <casey at zope.com> wrote:

Or how about as?

as classmethod: def jinkies(cls): pass Which seems nice in the face of other declarations: as protected(somepermission): def zoinks(self, scooby, snack): pass def jinkies(self): pass or [protectedby(somepermission)]: def dangerous(self, risk): pass

I like this a lot. The effort to avoid new keywords, though laudable in many ways, comes at the cost of increased use of punctuation.

I generally find punctuation harder to read than keywords. Also, it is usually incomprehensible to someone unfamiliar with the language. The relative lack of punctuation in python as compared, say, to C is one if its great strengths, to my mind. It is one reason Python reads so much like pseudocode (or did before some of the recent changes such as list comprehensions -- very useful but a classic example of the problem of overloading punctuation).

I'd be very sad to see [] used for yet some other purpose.

-- Russell

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