Compiler directives in the source

[Andy Jewell]

What about a special module, maybe even metamodule, that allowed the 
manipulation of such things?  Rather like "from __future__ import ...", 
maybe:

import __options__

__options__.optimize(True)
__options__.olddivision(0)
__options__.importsite(True)
__options__.verbose(False)
__options__.warnings(arg)
__options__.debug(False)
__options__.ignorecase(False)
__options__.path("dir;dir")
__options__.home(dir)

This would obviously fail on versions which didn't support it!


Maybe even a 'special' variable, perhaps a dict:


__options__={"optimize":True,
                    "olddivision":0,
                    "importsite":True,
                    "verbose":False,
                    "warnings":arg,
                    "debug":False,
                    "ignorecase":False,
                    "path":"dir;dir",
                    "home":"dir"
                    }


Most likely solution will break some fossil or other...

I personally think that the comment-pragma solution is too reminiscent of 
older, less cultured languages.

The use of a special punctuation character to introduce such options seems to 
me to be rather non-pythonic.

-andyj