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[Python-Dev] AC Derby and accepting None for optional positional arguments

Larry Hastings larry at hastings.org
Thu Jan 16 20:43:31 CET 2014 
On 01/16/2014 04:21 AM, MRAB wrote:
> On 2014-01-16 05:32, Larry Hastings wrote:
> [snip]
>
>> We could add a special value, let's call it
>> sys.NULL, whose specific semantics are "turns into NULL when passed into
>> builtins".  This would solve the problem but it's really, really awful.
>>
> Would it be better if it were called "__null__"?

No.  The problem is not the name, the problem is in the semantics. This 
would mean a permanent special case in Python's argument parsing (and 
"special cases aren't special enough to break the rules"), and would 
inflict these same awful semantics on alternate implementations like 
PyPy, Jython, and IronPython.


//arry/
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