What exactly is "pass"? What should it be?

[Chris Rebert]

On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 9:34 PM, Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 4:07 PM, John Ladasky <ladasky at my-deja.com> wrote:
>> One of my questions was: would there be any merit to having the Python "pass" token itself defined exactly as _pass() is defined above?
>
> No, there wouldn't. The Python 'pass' statement is a special statement
> that indicates a lack of anything to execute; a dummy function call
> isn't this. What I would kinda like to see, though, is function
> versions of many things. Your basic operators exist in the 'operator'
> module, but the syntax is rather clunky; for comparison, Pike has
> beautifully simple (if a little cryptic) syntax: back-tick followed by
> the operator itself, very similar to the way C++ does operator
> overloading.
>
> In Python 2, back-tick has a special meaning. In Python 3, that
> meaning is removed. Is the character now available for this
> "function-version" syntax?

Negative. I know this from personal experience.

Things that will Not Change in Python 3000
(http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3099/ ):
"No more backticks."

Cheers,
Chris R.