Official reason for omitting inspect.currentcallable() ?

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 6:24 PM, Steven D'Aprano
<steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:
> On Sun, 12 Aug 2012 23:06:19 +0000, kj wrote:
>
>> Is there an *explicitly stated* reason (e.g. in a PEP, or in some python
>> dev list message) for why the inspect module (at least for Python 2.7)
>> does not include anything like a "currentcallable()" function that would
>> *stably*[1] return the currently executing callable object?
>
> I doubt it. Should there be? "currentcallable" is not a standard function
> in any language I'm familiar with, although I may be missing something
> obvious.

I'm not familiar with it by that name, but Pike's this_function is
what the OP's describing.

(Yes, I'm citing Pike again. Sorry.)

It's a useful construct in theory when you want to write in recursion,
which was part of the rationale behind PEP 3130 (btw, Terry, it would
have been nice if you'd mentioned the number instead of sending me to
the index to try to figure out which one you were referring to, but
anyway). But how often is it actually useful in practice? I've never
actually used this_function other than in writing a crazy recursive
lambda (was testing different languages' handling of infinite
recursion - high level languages shouldn't segfault, one much-maligned
language DOES).

ChrisA