[Python-Dev] Informal educator feedback on PEP 572 (was Re: 2018 Python Language Summit coverage, last part)

[Nick Coghlan]

On 27 June 2018 at 23:38, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> Nick Coghlan wrote:
>>
>> actually made those semantics available as an explicit
>> "parentlocal NAME" declaration ...:
>>
>>     def _list_comp(_outermost_iter):
>>         parentlocal item
>>         _result = []
>>         for x in _outermost_iter:
>>             item = x
>>             _result.append(x)
>>         return _result
>>
>>     _expr_result = _list_comp(items)
>
>
> I'm not sure that's possible. If I understand correctly,
> part of the definition of "parent local" is that "parent"
> refers to the nearest enclosing *non-comprehension* scope,
> to give the expected result for nested comprehensions.
> If that's so, then it's impossible to fully decouple its
> definition from comprehensions.

I'm OK with a target scope declaration construct having
lexical-scope-dependent behaviour - exactly what "nonlocal NAME" will
do depends on both the nature of the current scope, and on which names
are declared as local in which outer scopes, and that's also
implicitly the case for all name lookups.

However, PEP 572 in its current form takes the position "parent local
scoping is sufficiently useful to make it a required pre-requisite for
adding assignment expressions, but not useful enough to expose as a
new scope declaration primitive", and I've come to the view that it
really is the "A+B=MAGIC!" aspect of the current proposal that bothers
me, whereas "A+B implies C for <pragmatic reasons>" doesn't bother me
any more than the implicit non-local references introduced as part of
the original lexical scoping changes bother me.

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia