[Python-Dev] PEP for Better Control of Nested Lexical Scopes (original) (raw)

Jeremy Hylton jeremy at alum.mit.edu
Wed Feb 22 12:14:21 CET 2006

On 2/22/06, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:

Mark Russell wrote:

> PEP 227 mentions using := as a rebinding operator, but rejects the > idea as it would encourage the use of closures. Well, anything that facilitates rebinding in outer scopes is going to encourage the use of closures, so I can't see that as being a reason to reject a particular means of rebinding. You either think such rebinding is a good idea or not -- and that seems to be a matter of highly individual taste.

At the time PEP 227 was written, nested scopes were contentious. (I recall one developer who said he'd be embarassed to tell his co-workers he worked on Python if it had this feature :-). Rebinding was more contentious, so the feature was left out. I don't think any particular syntax or spelling for rebinding was favored more or less.

On this particular idea, I tend to think it's too obscure as well. Python generally avoids attaching randomly-chosen semantics to punctuation, and I'd like to see it stay that way.

I agree.

Jeremy

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