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[Python-Dev] Non-string keys in type dict

Ethan Furman ethan at stoneleaf.us
Thu Mar 8 08:46:34 CET 2012 
Nick Coghlan wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 11:42 AM, Benjamin Peterson <benjamin at python.org> wrote:
>> 2012/3/7 Victor Stinner <victor.stinner at gmail.com>:
>>> Can't we simply raise an error if the dict contains
>>> non-string keys?
>> Sounds okay to me.
> 
> For 3.3, the most we can do is trigger a deprecation warning, since
> removing this feature *will* break currently running code. I don't
> have any objection to us starting down that path, though.

I think it would be sad to lose that functionality.

If we are going to, though, we may as well check the string to make sure 
it's a valid identifier:

--> class A:
-->   pass
--> setattr(A, '42', 'hrm')
--> A.42
   File "<stdin>", line 1
     A.42
        ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Doesn't seem very useful.

~Ethan~
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