[Python-Dev] Pragmas: Just say "No!"

[Neil Hodgson]

Greg Ewing:
> Greg Wilson <gvwilson@nevex.com>:
>
> > Pragmas are a way to embed programs for the
> > parser in the file being parsed.
>
> I hope the BDFL has the good sense to run screaming from
> anything that has the word "pragma" in it. As this discussion
> demonstrates, it's far too fuzzy and open-ended a concept --
> nobody can agree on what sort of thing a pragma is supposed
> to be.

   It is a good idea, however, to claim a piece of syntactic turf as early
as possible so that if/when it is needed, it is unlikely to cause problems
with previously written code. My preference would be to introduce a reserved
word 'directive' for future expansion here. 'pragma' has connotations of
'ignorable compiler hint' but most of the proposed compiler directives will
cause incorrect behaviour if ignored.

   Neil