[Python-Dev] Making None a keyword

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org
Thu, 25 Apr 2002 23:08:37 -0400


I'd like to make None a keyword.  This prevents dumb users from
assigning to it and screwing themselves, and can cause a slight
speedup because using None avoids two dict lookups.

- Any objections?

- Can somebody help me implement this?  I've got the parser changes
  ready, but not the compiler changes.

Believe it or not, Zope3 contains code that will break with this
change: there are functions with a default argument of the form
None=None as a speedup hack.  I think this is an argument *for* the
change. :-)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)