pep 336: Make None Callable

[Alex Martelli]

Terry Hancock <hancock at anansispaceworks.com> wrote:
   ...
> I just noticed though, that:
> 
> noop = lambda *a, **kw: None
> 
> is illegal (apparently lambda doesn't support argument indirection (or
> whatever that "*" syntax is properly called)).  Never tried it before.

???  it's quite OK:

kallisti:~/cb/cha/oop/cba alex$ python2.3
Python 2.3 (#1, Sep 13 2003, 00:49:11) 
[GCC 3.3 20030304 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 1495)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> lambda *a, **k: None
<function <lambda> at 0x61430>

> Maybe there should be a noop built-in, though?

A Null object, whether built-in on in the stdlib, sounds better to me.
Calling is just one of N operations you may want to do on it, after all!
Indexing, slicing, and so forth -- why not cover those, too?


Alex