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

Tim Peters tim.peters at gmail.com
Fri Aug 6 19:21:42 CEST 2004

[Guido]

A reference manual describes the status quo. How can it possibly begin to describe future directions? (Except when reserving certain classes of identifiers like C does.)

If it's a designer's intent that, say, the '#' character will never be used by the language, then the reference manual can simply say that. In the absence of such explicit promises, it is indeed only describing the current state of the language,

It's unreasonable to read the current Python ref as promising that @ (and ? and $) will never be used in any version of Python. It's understandable that people would bet on it, though, since that little set of unused characters hasn't changed in Python's history.

If you want to say that Python will never use one (or more) of those characters, it's easy to add such a promise. If you don't want to make such a promise, then it may be clearer (for non-lawyers) to say that Python reserves @$?.

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