On 9/27/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Adam Atlas</b> <<a href="mailto:adam@atlas.st">adam@atlas.st</a>> wrote:<div><span class="gmail_quote"></span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> <br>On 27 Sep 2007, at 21:47, George Sakkis wrote:<br><br>> I guess this has very few to zero chances of being considered, even<br>> for Python 3, but this being python-ideas I guess it's ok to bring<br>> it up. IMO the del statement is one of the relatively few <br>> constructs that stick out like a sore thumb. For one thing, it is<br>> overloaded to mean three different things:<br>> 1) del x: Remove x from the current namespace<br>> 2) del x[i]: Equivalent to x.__delitem__(i) <br>> 3) del x.a: Equivalent to x.__delattr__('a') and delattr(x,'a')<br><br><br>I guess this has very few to zero chances of being considered, even<br>for Python 3, but this being python-ideas I guess it's ok to bring it <br>up. IMO the = statement is one of the relatively few constructs that<br>stick out like a sore thumb. For one thing, it is overloaded to mean<br>three different things:<br>1) x = : Assign x in the current namespace<br> 2) x[i] = : Equivalent to x.__setitem__(i)<br>3) x.a = : Equivalent to x.__setattr__('a') and setattr(x,'a')<br><br><br>(Sorry for the slight sarcasm, but I hope you see my point. I don't<br>see why the deletion statement should go while the perfectly <br>complementary and nearly-identically-"overloaded" assignment<br>statement should stay.)</blockquote><div><br>Apples to oranges. I thought It would be obvious and that's why I didn't mention it, but getitem/setitem and friends use almost universally known punctuation; OTOH only Python AFAIK uses a keyword for a relatively infrequent operation. <br></div></div><br>George