[Python-Dev] PEP 457: Syntax For Positional-Only Parameters (original) (raw)

Benjamin Peterson benjamin at python.org
Wed Oct 9 17:11:25 CEST 2013

2013/10/9 Larry Hastings <larry at hastings.org>:

On 10/09/2013 04:24 PM, Benjamin Peterson wrote:

My proposed syntax is a little complex--but complex is better than complicated and inconsistent and undocumented and inconvenient, which is what we have now. Certainly the argument conventions of these functions are not undocumented, so wonder what is. Also, inconvenient for what? What inconsistency problem does this PEP solve?

Whether or not a particular function accepts keyword arguments is undocumented. I have in the past been inconvenienced by this not being clear. The documentation uses two approaches for documenting option groups, effectively at random, which is inconsistent.

I suppose the question is whether people will find it easier to learn your syntax for documenting it, or just relearning it for particular functions whenever they attempt to use a kwarg for a position argument. I don't expect it will show up on many functions.

-- Regards, Benjamin

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