No "side effect" assignment!

[Martin Maney]

Paul Paterson <paulpaterson at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> I think that the other drawback is that it only works at the top level of a
> module.

Yeah, it comes back to me now.  So there's still nothing but ugly
and/or dangerous workarounds when you need to use a function's result
in a conditional as well as later on.  Pytho is such a pleasant
language 95% of the time that the nastiness of the corner cases seems
worse than they rationally warrant - or maybe not, since these warts
tend to drop me out of flow and cost a lot more time than just
remebering the way(s) to hack around them.

> I guess you might call "a.f_locals.update(kw)" a no-(side)-effect assignment

Sure 'nuff.  Pity, it was otherwise quite a nice answer to what seems
to be an endlessly recurring issue.

-- 
Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity
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of the loser is perfectly clear.  It is the nation's confidence
in the judge as an impartial guardian of the law.
 - Justice John Paul Stevens, from his dissenting opinion Dec 12, 2000