what is the "/" mean in __init__(self, /, *args, **kwargs) ?

[Mark Lawrence]

On 14/08/2014 03:08, Ben Finney wrote:
> luofeiyu <elearn2014 at gmail.com> writes:
>
>>>>> help(int.__init__)
>> Help on wrapper_descriptor:
>>
>> __init__(self, /, *args, **kwargs)
>>      Initialize self.  See help(type(self)) for accurate signature.
>>
>> what is the "/" mean in __init__(self, /, *args, **kwargs) ?
>
> I don't know, I haven't seen that before. It is confusing.
>
> At least it is acknowledged (“See [elsewhere] for accurate signature”)
> to be unhelpful.
>
> I suspect this is an artefact of the impedance mismatch between Python
> function signatures and the implementation of ‘int’ in C code. The “/”
> may be a placeholder for something the C implementation requires but
> that Python's function signature expectation doesn't allow.
>
> Perhaps Python 3's keyword-only arguments may one day help functions
> like that get implemented with a more useful signature, but I'm not
> holding my breath for that.
>

Something to do with the Argement Clinic 
http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0436/ ???

-- 
My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask
what you can do for our language.

Mark Lawrence