PEP 318: Can't we all just get along?

[Michael J. Fromberger]

In article <cfvpf0$p5k$1 at panix3.panix.com>, aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) 
wrote:

> In article <20040817181725194-0400 at braeburn.themorgue.org>,
> Kevin Smith  <Kevin.Smith at sas.com> wrote:
> >
> >Bear with me, but I'd like to propose one more syntax that is simple, 
> >easy for newbies to understand,  and nowhere near as powerful as the 
> >current PEP's syntax.  However, it doesn't add incoherent, arbitrary 
> >syntax either.
> >
> >def classmethod foo(x, y, z):
> >    pass
> 
> You can't do ``grep "def foo"``; therefore, Guido rejected this.  (It's
> a tiny bit more complicated than that, but that's the essence.)

I suppose that's understandable; but would it really be so much worse to 
have to write:

  egrep "def [_a-z0-9]* *foo"

or, even

  grep "def" | grep "foo("

I respectfully submit that this, while it makes a certain amount of 
sense, is probably not a very good design criterion for new syntactic 
features.

-M

-- 
Michael J. Fromberger             | Lecturer, Dept. of Computer Science
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~sting/  | Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA