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

Samuele Pedroni pedronis at bluewin.ch
Wed Mar 31 19:09:59 EST 2004

Well, it is worrying me. Each special case is one more thing that adds a burden to using Python. The fact that whitespace and comments are allowed between the decorator and function definition is particularly worrying to me - it can quite easily mask errors in code - particularly newbie errors: [a] # oops - I copied this from an interactive session and forgot to modify it. # This is a simple function def func (args): pass

I'm not invested into this in any way, but the variations

+[classmethod] def f(cls): pass

or

-[classmethod] def f(cls): pass

are syntactically valid today but OTOH differently from plain [...] correspond to run-time errors.

/[classmethod] def f(cls): pass

*[classmethod] def f(cls): pass

even better are syntax errors but are really ugly.

I could live with the +[...] form, as I can live

[...] def f(...):

or

def f(...) [...]:

it's really a matter of "practicality beats purity" and a compromise/balance issue.

The limits of the parser aren't helping either in this case.

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list