Mike Meyer wrote: > Antoon Pardon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > I know what happens, I would like to know, why they made this choice. > > One could argue that the expression for the default argument belongs > > to the code for the function and thus should be executed at call time. > > Not at definion time. Just as other expressions in the function are > > not evaluated at definition time. > > The idiom to get a default argument evaluated at call time with the > current behavior is: > > def f(arg = None): > if arg is None: > arg = BuildArg() > > What's the idiom to get a default argument evaluated at definition > time if it were as you suggested? >
Having default arguments evaluated at definition time certainly bites a lot of newbies. It allows useful tricks with nested scopes though. All the best, Fuzzyman http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/index.shtml > <mike > -- > Mike Meyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ > Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
