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

David Eppstein eppstein at ics.uci.edu
Mon Apr 5 19:24:14 EDT 2004

In article <200404052209.i35M9m606023 at guido.python.org>, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

> presumably the parser could handle this syntax if "as" were a keyword.

Not really. The parser is really dumb, it han only handle one alternative starting with a particular token at any point. Since '['_ _can already start an expression and an expression is a valid_ _statement, anything else also starting with '[', even if it isn't a_ _valid expression, cannot be accepted. You may be thinking of Yacc,_ _which has much more liberal rules._ _--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

Ok, then how about def ... ?

'<' can't start an expression or statement currently, can it?

-- David Eppstein http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/ Univ. of California, Irvine, School of Information & Computer Science

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list