For review: PEP 343: Anonymous Block Redux and Generator Enhancements

[Steven Bethard]

Andrew Dalke wrote:
> On Sat, 04 Jun 2005 10:43:48 -0600, Steven Bethard wrote:
> 
>>Ilpo Nyyssönen wrote:
>>
>>>How about this instead:
>>>
>>>with locking(mutex), opening(readfile) as input:
>>>    ...
> 
>>I don't like the ambiguity this proposal introduces.  What is input 
>>bound to?
> 
> It would use the same logic as the import statement, which already
> supports an 'as' like this

Ahh, so if I wanted the locking one I would write:

     with locking(mutex) as lock, opening(readfile) as input:
         ...

There was another proposal that wrote this as:

     with locking(mutex), opening(readfile) as lock, input:
         ...

which is what was confusing me.  Mirroring the 'as' from the import 
statement seems reasonable.


But it doesn't address my other concern, namely, is

     with locking(mutex), opening(readfile) as input:
         ...

equivalent to the nested with-statements, e.g.:

     _locking = locking(mutex)
     _exc1 = (None, None, None)
     _locking.__enter__()
     try:
         try:
             _opening = opening(readfile)
             _exc2 = (None, None, None)
             input = _opening.__enter__()
             try:
                 try:
                     ...
                 except:
                     _exc2 = sys.exc_info()
                     raise
             finally:
                 _opening.__exit__(*exc)
         except:
             _exc1 = sys.exc_info()
             raise
     finally:
         _locking.__exit__(*exc)

Or is it equivalent to something different, perhaps:

     _locking = locking(mutex)
     _opening = opening(readfile)
     _exc = (None, None, None)
     _locking.__enter__()
     input = _opening.__enter__()
     try:
         try:
             ...
         except:
             _exc = sys.exc_info()
             raise
     finally:
         _opening.__exit__(*exc)
         _locking.__exit__(*exc)

Or maybe:

     _locking = locking(mutex)
     _opening = opening(readfile)
     _exc = (None, None, None)
     _locking.__enter__()
     input = _opening.__enter__()
     try:
         try:
             ...
         except:
             _exc = sys.exc_info()
             raise
     finally:
         # same order as __enter__ calls this time!!
         _locking.__exit__(*exc)
         _opening.__exit__(*exc)

All I'm saying is that any of these are possible given the syntax.  And 
I don't see a precedent in Python for preferring one over another. 
(Though perhaps there is one somewhere that I'm missing...)

And if it *is* just equivalent to the nested with-statements, how often 
will this actually be useful?  Is it a common occurrence to need 
multiple with-statements?  Is the benefit of saving a level of 
indentation going to outweigh the complexity added by complicating the 
with-statement?

STeVe