[Python-Dev] Informal educator feedback on PEP 572 (was Re: 2018 Python Language Summit coverage, last part) (original) (raw)

Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Sat Jun 30 16:06:39 EDT 2018

On 6/30/2018 5:35 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

I've given reasons why I believe that people will expect assignments in comprehensions to occur in the local scope. Aside from the special case of loop variables, people don't think of comprehensions as a separate scope.

I think this is because comprehensions other than generator expressions were originally defined in terms of equivalent code in the same local scope, are still easily thought of in those terms, and, as I explained in my response to Guido, could, at least in simple cases, still be implemented in the local scope, so that assignment expressions would be executed and affect the expected local scope without 'nonlocal'.

Generator expressions, on the other hand, have always been defined in terms of equivalent code in a nested scope, and must be implemented that way, so some re-definition and re-implementation is needed for assignment expressions to affect the local scope in which the g.e is defined and for that effect to be comprehensible. It might be enough to add something like "any names that are targets of assignment expressions are added to global or nonlocal declarations within the implementation generator function."

If the equality [generator-expression] == list(generator-expression] is preserved, then it could serve as the definition of the list comprehension. The same could be true for set and dict comprehensions, with the understanding that the equality is modified to {a:b for ...} == dict((a,b) for ...). It should also be mentioned that the defining equality is not necessarily the implementation.

-- Terry Jan Reedy

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