initialization in argument definitions

[Terry Reedy]

greg wrote:
> George Sakkis wrote:
> 
>> Don't worry, it's not obvious to *anyone* new to Python (and many not-
>> so-new for that matter).
> 
> That's by no means certain, because we only hear from the
> people who guessed the wrong way. We have no way of knowing
> how many people guessed the right way.

I did not guess.  I started by reading through the tutorial in about 
three hours.  Then I did some work with Python.  Within a couple of 
weeks, I read through the ref manual.  I am really weird, it seems.