[Python-ideas] keywords and backward compatibility

[Barry Scott]

There seems to be a recurring theme of ideas wanting a new keyword
but not being able to have one because of backwards compatibility.

What if I have a way to ask for the new keyword? Would that make it
easier to accept and implement some of the new ideas?

The "given" keyword for example could be allow with a statement like:

	from __future__ import keyword_given

If this method of extending the python language was used for a while
I can see that the downside would be that an author of a new module
will end up potentially putting a lot of from __future__ statements as a
preamble.

Barry