functions, list, default parameters

[Roy Smith]

In article <iao0l0$nd4$5 at lust.ihug.co.nz>,
 Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo at geek-central.gen.new_zealand> wrote:

> In message <20101021235138.609fe668 at geekmail.INVALID>, Andreas Waldenburger 
> wrote:
> 
> > While not very commonly needed, why should a shared default argument be
> > forbidden?
> 
> Because it’s safer to disallow it than to allow it.

The best way to deal with this is to have some kind of knob you can turn 
to enable or disable warnings about these sorts of things.  Could be a 
command-line flag, a stand-alone tool (i.e. pylint), or even something 
in-line (like perl' 'use strict' directive).

Good engineering practice would be use enable "debug mode" during 
testing and review all the warnings to see which ones surprise you.