RetroSearch Browse

Wed Feb 22 20:41:54 CET 2006 · https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-February/061720.html

On 2/21/06, Phillip J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:
> Here's a crazy idea, that AFAIK has not been suggested before and could
> work for both globals and closures: using  a leading dot, ala the new
> relative import feature.  e.g.:
>
>     def incrementer(val):
>         def inc():
>             .val += 1
>             return .val
>         return inc
>
> The '.' would mean "this name, but in the nearest outer scope that defines
> it".  Note that this could include the global scope, so the 'global'
> keyword could go away in 2.5.  And in Python 3.0, the '.' could become
> *required* for use in closures, so that it's not necessary for the reader
> to check a function's outer scope to see whether closure is taking
> place.  EIBTI.

FWIW, I think this is nice.  Since it uses the same dot-notation that
normal attribute access uses, it's clearly accessing the attribute of
*some* namespace.  It's not perfectly intuitive that the accessed
namespace is the enclosing one, but I do think it's at least more
intuitive than the suggested := operator, and at least as intuitive as
a ``global``-like declaration.  And, as you mention, it's consistent
with the relative import feature.

I'm a little worried that this proposal will get lost amid the mass of
other suggestions being thrown out right now.  Any chance of turning
this into a PEP?

Steve
--
Grammar am for people who can't think for myself.
        --- Bucky Katt, Get Fuzzy

Home - News ( United States | United Kingdom | Italy | Germany ) - Football scores

Showing content from https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-February/061720.html below:

[Python-Dev] Using and binding relative names (was Re: PEP for Better Control of Nested Lexical Scopes)