"no variable or argument declarations are necessary."

[Steve Holden]

Brian Quinlan wrote:
> Paul Rubin wrote:
> 
>>Brian Quinlan <brian at sweetapp.com> writes:
>>
>>
>>>Have those of you who think that the lack of required declarations in
>>>Python is a huge weakness given any thought to the impact that adding
>>>them would have on the rest of the language? I can't imagine how any
>>>language with required declarations could even remotely resemble
>>>Python.
>>
>>
>>Python already has a "global" declaration;
> 
> 
> Which is evaluated at runtime, does not require that the actual global 
> variable be pre-existing, and does not create the global variable if not 
> actually assigned. I think that is pretty different than your proposal 
> semantics.
> 
I believe that "global" is the one Python statement that isn't actually 
executable, and simply conditions the code generated during compilation 
(to bytecode).

Hard to see why someone would want to use a global declaration unless 
they were intending to assign to it, given the sematnics of access.
> 
[...]

regards
  Steve
-- 
Steve Holden       +44 150 684 7255  +1 800 494 3119
Holden Web LLC                     www.holdenweb.com
PyCon TX 2006                  www.python.org/pycon/