Modifying the {} and [] tokens

[Scott David Daniels]

Geoff Howland wrote:
> I want to modify the {} and [] tokens to contain additional
> functionality they do not currently contain, such as being able to add
> dicts to dicts, and other things that would be very helpful for me and
> my team mates to have.

You might want to contribute to pypy -- once their work is completed 
we'll have a python written fully in python that will allow you such 
experiments.

I'm sorry, but I cannot resist complaining a bit about allowing such
changes as implementable in modules:

user A likes (and implements) your idea about {} + {}, user B thinks
you are right, but where the two dictionaries share a coomon key, the
value shoud be the sum of the two values.  Either of these works, but
modules expecting one will fail with the other.  As a result, it seems
a bad idea to allow modules to make such changes.  I do _not_ mean
that the experiment in redefining {} can/should not be tried, but
rather the experiment must be environment-wide; it does not isolate
nicely.

As a practical matter, I suspect the current feeling is towards fewer,
rather than more, punctualtion-based expressions -- they are harder to 
look up i na reference document.

-Scott David Daniels
Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org