Home Original page

PEP 318 - Function Modifier Syntax

Jonathan Claggett hellen at claggetts.net
Wed Jun 11 16:20:00 EDT 2003 
Erik Max Francis wrote:
> Deja vu.  The benefit, as I see it, is that `as' is a secondary keyword
> -- it presently only has meaning in conjunction with an 'import'
> statement.  Since it's a lowly little preposition, it doesn't have all
> that much intrinsic meaning by itself.  If adding keywords were "free,"
> perhaps some new word might be helpful, such as `has'.  But there is
> significant inertia against adding new keywords, so if we can make do
> with old ones, so much the better.  I personally think that `as' is a
> very good choice for this because of its secondary nature.
 
Fair enough, I wasn't aware of the "as"'s 2nd class status in the
pantheon of keywords compared to "is". I think this PEP is valuable
either way and so "as" would work for me (for what its worth: +1 for
"def f(x) as blah[, blah...]" syntax).

Jonathan
More information about the Python-list mailing list