Calling Function Without Parentheses!

[Jeff Shannon]

Kamilche wrote:

> Yeah, but still. If they even had the most basic check, like 'an object
> is being referred to on this line, but you're not doing anything with
> it' would be handy in catching that. When you use an object like that,
> usually you're doing something with it, like assigning it to a variable.
> 

In many cases, however, it's not possible to distinguish this.

     def get_pi():
         import math
         return math.pi

     print my_func(get_pi)

Now, am I trying to pass the function object get_pi into my_func(), or 
do I want to call get_pi() and pass the return value?

There are also many times when it's sensible to do nothing with an 
object reference -- i.e. ignoring the return value of a function which 
you're calling for its side-effects.

It seems to me that it's reasonable for the Python interpreter to 
*not* attempt to guess at whether a questionable usage is an error or 
not.  Better to have that done by a developer tool (pychecker) than 
through runtime checks every time the program is used.

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International