[Python-Dev] #pragmas in Python source code

[Fred L. Drake, Jr.]

Ka-Ping Yee writes:
 > Wa-wa-wa-wa-wait... i thought the whole point of pragmas was
 > that they were supposed to control the operation of the parser
 > itself (you know, set the source character encoding and so on).
 > So by definition they would have to happen at a different level,
 > above the parsing.

  Hmm.  That's one proposed use, which doesn't seem to fit well with
my proposal.  But I don't know that I'd think of that as a "pragma" in
the general sense.
  I'll think about this one.  I think encoding is a very special case,
and I'm not sure I like dealing with it as a pragma.
  Are there any other (programming) languages that attempt to deal
with multiple encodings?  Perhaps I missed a message about it.

 > Or do we need to separate out two categories of pragmas --
 > pre-parse and post-parse pragmas?

  Eeeks!  We don't need too many special forms!  That's ugly!


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	  <fdrake at acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives