[Python-ideas] Idea : for smarter assignment?

[Jason H]

I experimented with Python in college and I've been for close to 20 years now. (Coming and going as needed) I love the language. But there is one annoyance that I continually run into. 

There are basically two assignment operators, based on context, = and : 
a = 1 
{ a: 1 } 

They cannot be used interchangeably:
a: 1 # error
{a=1} # error

I don't think I should be this way.

There are times when I have a bunch of variables that I want to collect into an object or destructure. This involves adding commas, and swapping the :/=. I don't have a good fix for  the adding of commas (maybe a newline?)
but I think : should at least be accepted as = everywhere except in ifs:
a: 1 # same as a = 1

One area where it might help (although the python parser already catches it) is in ifs:
if a:1 # always error ?
if a=1 # currently error, but might be accepted shorthand for == ?

Ideally, I could take
a: 1
b: 2
then in 3 edits:
1. first line prepend 'x: {'
2. last line append '}'
3. indent between { }

I guess his would imply that { open up an assignment scope, where newlines are commas if the last line did not end with an operator or the next line did not start with an operator:
x: { 
  a: x -  # - operator
    f(x) 
  b:      # : operator
    5487234728394720348988734574357
  c: 7    # c is 13, no trailing operator but next line has a preceding operator
    + 6 
}

The only issue then is how do we address a?
x.a    # looks fine to me
x['a'] # as a dict, but the conversion of a to string 'a' could be confusing.


Additionally, I was also thinking about : as an implied await:
a = await f() # await generator
a: f()        # await generator, or direct assignment if return type is not a generator/async func

Thoughts? Please be gentle :-)