Why the “mutable default argument fix” syntax is so ugly, asks python newbie

Question

^{Now following my series of \"python newbie questions\" and based on another question.}

Prerogative

Go to http://python.net/~goodger/projects/pyco

Answer 1

I think you're confusing elegant syntax with syntactic sugar. The python syntax communicates both approaches clearly, it just happens that the correct approach appears less elegant (in terms of lines of syntax) than the incorrect approach. But since the incorrect approach, is well...incorrect, it's elegance is irrelevant. As to why something like you demonstrate in better_append is not implemented, I would guess that There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it. trumps minor gains in elegance.