To 'with' or not to 'with': how is the question ?

[Daniel Dittmar]

> This seems a good idea in origin (from Pascal), exagerated so
> much that  spoils any traces of programming. 

It's acutally much better than the original Pascal

- there is only one with active (only the inner most) at any time, so
you know where to look
- the point clear 'points' you to the with, in Pascal, an identifier
could belong to the with or be a local variable

Smalltalk has something very similar:

Transcript
	print: 'some string';
        print: 'another string';
	nl.

So '.goes_against_OO' is a bit off - but it makes always nice copy.

Which one looks the best:

def alternativeOne ():
    sys.stdout.write (...)
    sys.stdout.write (...)
    sys.stdout.write (...)

def alternativeTwo ():
    syswrite = sys.stdout.write
    syswrite (...)
    syswrite (...)
    syswrite (...)

def alternativeThree ():
    with sys.stdout:
        .write (...)
        .write (...)
        .write (...)

Daniel