def a((b,c,d),e):

[George Sakkis]

"François Pinard" wrote:
> > > keywords may be abbreviated, and much more hairy,
>
> > Hmm.. -1 on this. It may save a few keystrokes, but it's not good
for
> > readability and maintenability.
>
> That was my first impression too.  Yet, interactively, I found that
> feature very convenient.  Already with Python, I use shortcuts
> interactively that I would not write nor keep in real, saved,
permanent
> programs.  And for very common functions and features, which are not
> really fluctuating anymore, some abbreviations became well known
idioms.

Yes, interactive use can be very different from saved modules to be
used, read and modified in the future. However if such a feature is
part of the language, it is up to the programmer's experience and
responsibility to use it only interactively. As for interactive
shortcuts, I've been using IPython for some months now as my standard
interpreter; with features such as tab completion, logged history,
'macros' and integration with the shell, shortcuts are everywhere ! Tab
completion does not work for named function arguments yet, but it
should be possible with introspection.

George