[Python-Dev] PEP 343 - next steps

[Guido van Rossum]

I can't make time for this right now, but the more I think about it,
the more I believe the worry about asynchronous exceptions is mostly
irrational. Despite your "proof" that it *can* be implemented I really
don't want to see anything like that implemented -- I doubt that
you've covered all the cases and I don't like inserting new opcodes to
handle a case that most programs don't care about. Declaring something
"atomic" that could span an arbitrary amount of Python code execution
(including calls) just doesn't seem right.

Disregarding asynchronous exceptions, you can already use
with-statements for your beloved RAII pattern, right? I'm still
skeptical how important it is in Python -- its seems something
invented very specifically for C++'s guarantee of local destructor
execution, and I don't expect to see all that many applications for it
in Python. The with-statement is about the reduction of boiler-plate
code involving try-finally, and that is typically not used for
resource release (unless you count locks, where RAII is inappropriate
-- at least in Python).

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)