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| You are working in `/workspace/cpython`, a source tree checked out at | |
| the base commit for this task. Implement the requested behavior in the source | |
| tree, then run: | |
| ```bash | |
| lolbench-submit | |
| ``` | |
| Do not stop after editing files, running tests, or describing the solution. The | |
| task is complete only when `lolbench-submit` has created | |
| `/logs/artifacts/solution.patch`. If that file does not exist, continue | |
| working and run `lolbench-submit` again. | |
| That command writes your implementation diff to | |
| `/logs/artifacts/solution.patch`, which is the artifact the Harbor verifier | |
| will grade. Before running `lolbench-submit`, clean or revert any test files | |
| you created or modified; test files must not be included in the final | |
| `solution.patch`. | |
| This environment has no outbound internet access — `curl`/`wget`, `git fetch`/`clone`, package installs, and web fetch/search will all fail. Implement the requirements using only the code already in the workspace and your own knowledge; do not attempt to fetch or search external resources. | |
| Now please implement the following requirements in the source tree: | |
| --- | |
| # PEP 701: Syntactic formalization of f-strings | |
| ## Abstract | |
| This document proposes to lift some of the restrictions originally formulated in | |
| PEP 498 and to provide a formalized grammar for f-strings that can be | |
| integrated into the parser directly. The proposed syntactic formalization of | |
| f-strings will have some small side-effects on how f-strings are parsed and | |
| interpreted, allowing for a considerable number of advantages for end users and | |
| library developers, while also dramatically reducing the maintenance cost of | |
| the code dedicated to parsing f-strings. | |
| ## Motivation | |
| When f-strings were originally introduced in PEP 498, the specification was | |
| provided without providing a formal grammar for f-strings. Additionally, the | |
| specification contains several restrictions that are imposed so the parsing of | |
| f-strings could be implemented into CPython without modifying the existing | |
| lexer. These limitations have been recognized previously and previous attempts | |
| have been made to lift them in PEP 536, but `none of this work was ever implemented`_. | |
| Some of these limitations (collected originally by PEP 536) are: | |
| #. It is impossible to use the quote character delimiting the f-string | |
| within the expression portion: | |
| ``` | |
| >>> f'Magic wand: { bag['wand'] }' | |
| ^ | |
| SyntaxError: invalid syntax | |
| ``` | |
| #. A previously considered way around it would lead to escape sequences | |
| in executed code and is prohibited in f-strings: | |
| ``` | |
| >>> f'Magic wand { bag[\'wand\'] } string' | |
| SyntaxError: f-string expression portion cannot include a backslash | |
| ``` | |
| #. Comments are forbidden even in multi-line f-strings: | |
| ``` | |
| >>> f'''A complex trick: { | |
| ... bag['bag'] # recursive bags! | |
| ... }''' | |
| SyntaxError: f-string expression part cannot include '#' | |
| ``` | |
| #. Arbitrary nesting of expressions without expansion of escape sequences is | |
| available in many other languages that employ a string interpolation | |
| method that uses expressions instead of just variable names. Some examples: | |
| ```text | |
| # Ruby | |
| "#{ "#{1+2}" }" | |
| # JavaScript | |
| `${`${1+2}`}` | |
| # Swift | |
| "\("\(1+2)")" | |
| # C# | |
| $"{$"{1+2}"}" | |
| ``` | |
| These limitations serve no purpose from a language user perspective and | |
| can be lifted by giving f-string literals a regular grammar without exceptions | |
| and implementing it using dedicated parse code. | |
| The other issue that f-strings have is that the current implementation in | |
| CPython relies on tokenising f-strings as `STRING` tokens and a post processing of | |
| these tokens. This has the following problems: | |
| #. It adds a considerable maintenance cost to the CPython parser. This is because | |
| the parsing code needs to be written by hand, which has historically led to a | |
| considerable number of inconsistencies and bugs. Writing and maintaining parsing | |
| code by hand in C has always been considered error prone and dangerous as it needs | |
| to deal with a lot of manual memory management over the original lexer buffers. | |
| #. The f-string parsing code is not able to use the new improved error message mechanisms | |
| that the new PEG parser, originally introduced in PEP 617, has allowed. The | |
| improvements that these error messages brought has been greatly celebrated but | |
| unfortunately f-strings cannot benefit from them because they are parsed in a | |
| separate piece of the parsing machinery. This is especially unfortunate, since | |
| there are several syntactical features of f-strings that can be confusing due | |
| to the different implicit tokenization that happens inside the expression | |
| part (for instance `f"{y:=3}"` is not an assignment expression). Now that the | |
| expression part is handed to the grammar itself, these confusing cases no | |
| longer fall back on a generic `f-string: invalid syntax`; the parser instead | |
| points at exactly what is wrong with the replacement field. An empty or | |
| otherwise invalid expression before a `}`, `!`, `:` or `=` raises | |
| `f-string: valid expression required before '}'` (and likewise `'!'`, `':'` | |
| or `'='`); a `{` that is not followed by a parseable expression raises | |
| `f-string: expecting a valid expression after '{'`; a replacement field that | |
| runs into an unexpected character, as in `f'{a $ b}'`, raises | |
| `f-string: expecting '=', or '!', or ':', or '}'`; and a `!` conversion marker | |
| left without a conversion character raises `f-string: missing conversion character`. A conversion whose character does not immediately follow the `!` — for instance separated from it by whitespace, as in `f'{value! s}'` — raises `f-string: conversion type must come right after the exclamation mark`. | |
| #. Other Python implementations have no way to know if they have implemented | |
| f-strings correctly because contrary to other language features, they are not | |
| part of the `official Python grammar <python:f-strings>`. | |
| This is important because several prominent | |
| alternative implementations are using CPython's PEG parser, `such as PyPy`_, | |
| and/or are basing their grammars on the official PEG grammar. The | |
| fact that f-strings use a separate parser prevents these alternative implementations | |
| from leveraging the official grammar and benefiting from improvements in error messages derived | |
| from the grammar. | |
| A version of this proposal was originally `discussed on Python-Dev`_ and | |
| `presented at the Python Language Summit 2022`_ where it was enthusiastically | |
| received. | |
| ## Rationale | |
| By building on top of the new Python PEG Parser (PEP 617), this PEP proposes | |
| to redefine “f-strings”, especially emphasizing the clear separation of the | |
| string component and the expression (or replacement, `{...}`) component. PEP 498 | |
| summarizes the syntactical part of “f-strings” as the following: | |
| In Python source code, an f-string is a literal string, prefixed with ‘f’, which | |
| contains expressions inside braces. The expressions are replaced with their values. | |
| However, PEP 498 also contained a formal list of exclusions on what | |
| can or cannot be contained inside the expression component (primarily due to the | |
| limitations of the existing parser). By clearly establishing the formal grammar, we | |
| now also have the ability to define the expression component of an f-string as truly "any | |
| applicable Python expression" (in that particular context) without being bound | |
| by the limitations imposed by the details of our implementation. | |
| The formalization effort and the premise above also has a significant benefit for | |
| Python programmers due to its ability to simplify and eliminate the obscure | |
| limitations. This reduces the mental burden and the cognitive complexity of | |
| f-string literals (as well as the Python language in general). | |
| #. The expression component can include any string literal that a normal Python expression | |
| can include. This opens up the possibility of nesting string literals (formatted or | |
| not) inside the expression component of an f-string with the same quote type (and length): | |
| ``` | |
| >>> f"These are the things: {", ".join(things)}" | |
| >>> f"{source.removesuffix(".py")}.c: $(srcdir)/{source}" | |
| >>> f"{f"{f"infinite"}"}" + " " + f"{f"nesting!!!"}" | |
| ``` | |
| This "feature" is not universally agreed to be desirable, and some users find this unreadable. | |
| For a discussion on the different views on this, see the `considerations regarding quote reuse`_ section. | |
| #. Another issue that has felt unintuitive to most is the lack of support for backslashes | |
| within the expression component of an f-string. One example that keeps coming up is including | |
| a newline character in the expression part for joining containers. For example: | |
| ``` | |
| >>> a = ["hello", "world"] | |
| >>> f"{'\n'.join(a)}" | |
| File "<stdin>", line 1 | |
| f"{'\n'.join(a)}" | |
| ^ | |
| SyntaxError: f-string expression part cannot include a backslash | |
| ``` | |
| A common work-around for this was to either assign the newline to an intermediate variable or | |
| pre-create the whole string prior to creating the f-string: | |
| ``` | |
| >>> a = ["hello", "world"] | |
| >>> joined = '\n'.join(a) | |
| >>> f"{joined}" | |
| 'hello\nworld' | |
| ``` | |
| It only feels natural to allow backslashes in the expression part now that the new PEG parser | |
| can easily support it. | |
| >>> a = ["hello", "world"] | |
| >>> f"{'\n'.join(a)}" | |
| 'hello\nworld' | |
| #. Before the changes proposed in this document, there was no explicit limit in | |
| how f-strings can be nested, but the fact that string quotes cannot be reused | |
| inside the expression component of f-strings made it impossible to nest | |
| f-strings arbitrarily. In fact, this is the most nested-fstring that can be | |
| written: | |
| ``` | |
| >>> f"""{f'''{f'{f"{1+1}"}'}'''}""" | |
| '2' | |
| ``` | |
| As this PEP allows placing **any** valid Python expression inside the | |
| expression component of the f-strings, it is now possible to reuse quotes and | |
| therefore is possible to nest f-strings arbitrarily: | |
| ``` | |
| >>> f"{f"{f"{f"{f"{f"{1+1}"}"}"}"}"}" | |
| '2' | |
| ``` | |
| Although this is just a consequence of allowing arbitrary expressions, the | |
| authors of this PEP do not believe that this is a fundamental benefit and we | |
| have decided that the language specification will not explicitly mandate that | |
| this nesting can be arbitrary. This is because allowing arbitrarily-deep | |
| nesting imposes a lot of extra complexity to the lexer implementation | |
| (particularly as lexer/parser pipelines need to allow "untokenizing" to | |
| support the 'f-string debugging expressions' and this is especially taxing when | |
| arbitrary nesting is allowed). Implementations are therefore free to impose a | |
| limit on the nesting depth if they need to. Note that this is not an uncommon | |
| situation, as the CPython implementation already imposes several limits all | |
| over the place, including a limit on the nesting depth of parentheses and | |
| brackets, a limit on the nesting of the blocks, a limit in the number of | |
| branches in `if` statements, a limit on the number of expressions in | |
| star-unpacking, etc. | |
| ## Specification | |
| The formal proposed PEG grammar specification for f-strings is (see PEP 617 | |
| for details on the syntax): | |
| ```peg | |
| fstring | |
| | FSTRING_START fstring_middle* FSTRING_END | |
| fstring_middle | |
| | fstring_replacement_field | |
| | FSTRING_MIDDLE | |
| fstring_replacement_field | |
| | '{' (yield_expr | star_expressions) "="? [ "!" NAME ] [ ':' fstring_format_spec* ] '}' | |
| fstring_format_spec: | |
| | FSTRING_MIDDLE | |
| | fstring_replacement_field | |
| ``` | |
| The new tokens (`FSTRING_START`, `FSTRING_MIDDLE`, `FSTRING_END`) are defined | |
| [later in this document](new tokens_). | |
| This PEP leaves up to the implementation the level of f-string nesting allowed | |
| (f-strings within the expression parts of other f-strings) but **specifies a | |
| lower bound of 5 levels of nesting**. This is to ensure that users can have a | |
| reasonable expectation of being able to nest f-strings with "reasonable" depth. | |
| This PEP implies that limiting nesting is **not part of the language | |
| specification** but also the language specification **doesn't mandate arbitrary | |
| nesting**. | |
| Similarly, this PEP leaves up to the implementation the level of expression nesting | |
| in format specifiers but **specifies a lower bound of 2 levels of nesting**. This means | |
| that the following should always be valid: | |
| ```python | |
| f"{'':*^{1:{1}}}" | |
| ``` | |
| but the following can be valid or not depending on the implementation: | |
| ```python | |
| f"{'':*^{1:{1:{1}}}}" | |
| ``` | |
| The new grammar will preserve the Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) of the current | |
| implementation. This means that no semantic changes will be introduced by this | |
| PEP on existing code that uses f-strings. | |
| ### Handling of f-string debug expressions | |
| Since Python 3.8, f-strings can be used to debug expressions by using the | |
| `=` operator. For example: | |
| ``` | |
| >>> a = 1 | |
| >>> f"{1+1=}" | |
| '1+1=2' | |
| ``` | |
| This semantics were not introduced formally in a PEP and they were implemented | |
| in the current string parser as a special case in [bpo-36817](https://bugs.python.org/issue?@action=redirect&bpo=36817) and documented in | |
| [the f-string lexical analysis section](https://docs.python.org/3/reference/lexical_analysis.html#f-strings). | |
| This feature is not affected by the changes proposed in this PEP but is | |
| important to specify that the formal handling of this feature requires the lexer | |
| to be able to "untokenize" the expression part of the f-string. This is not a | |
| problem for the current string parser as it can operate directly on the string | |
| token contents. However, incorporating this feature into a given parser | |
| implementation requires the lexer to keep track of the raw string contents of | |
| the expression part of the f-string and make them available to the parser when | |
| the parse tree is constructed for f-string nodes. A pure "untokenization" is not | |
| enough because as specified currently, f-string debug expressions preserve whitespace in the expression, | |
| including spaces after the `{` and the `=` characters. This means that the | |
| raw string contents of the expression part of the f-string must be kept intact | |
| and not just the associated tokens. | |
| How parser/lexer implementations deal with this problem is of course up to the | |
| implementation. | |
| ### New tokens | |
| Three new tokens are introduced: `FSTRING_START`, `FSTRING_MIDDLE` and | |
| `FSTRING_END`. Different lexers may have different implementations that may be | |
| more efficient than the ones proposed here given the context of the particular | |
| implementation. However, the following definitions will be used as part of the | |
| public APIs of CPython (such as the `tokenize` module) and are also provided | |
| as a reference so that the reader can have a better understanding of the | |
| proposed grammar changes and how the tokens are used: | |
| * `FSTRING_START`: This token includes the f-string prefix (`f`/`F`/`fr`) and the opening quote(s). | |
| * `FSTRING_MIDDLE`: This token includes a portion of text inside the string that's not part of the | |
| expression part and isn't an opening or closing brace. This can include the text between the opening quote | |
| and the first expression brace (`{`), the text between two expression braces (`}` and `{`) and the text | |
| between the last expression brace (`}`) and the closing quote. | |
| * `FSTRING_END`: This token includes the closing quote. | |
| These tokens are always string parts and they are semantically equivalent to the | |
| `STRING` token with the restrictions specified. These tokens must be produced by the lexer | |
| when lexing f-strings. This means that **the tokenizer cannot produce a single token for f-strings anymore**. | |
| How the lexer emits this token is **not specified** as this will heavily depend on every | |
| implementation (even the Python version of the lexer in the standard library is implemented | |
| differently to the one used by the PEG parser). | |
| As an example: | |
| ``` | |
| f'some words {a+b:.3f} more words {c+d=} final words' | |
| ``` | |
| will be tokenized as: | |
| ``` | |
| FSTRING_START - "f'" | |
| FSTRING_MIDDLE - 'some words ' | |
| LBRACE - '{' | |
| NAME - 'a' | |
| PLUS - '+' | |
| NAME - 'b' | |
| OP - ':' | |
| FSTRING_MIDDLE - '.3f' | |
| RBRACE - '}' | |
| FSTRING_MIDDLE - ' more words ' | |
| LBRACE - '{' | |
| NAME - 'c' | |
| PLUS - '+' | |
| NAME - 'd' | |
| OP - '=' | |
| RBRACE - '}' | |
| FSTRING_MIDDLE - ' final words' | |
| FSTRING_END - "'" | |
| ``` | |
| while `f"""some words"""` will be tokenized simply as: | |
| ``` | |
| FSTRING_START - 'f"""' | |
| FSTRING_MIDDLE - 'some words' | |
| FSTRING_END - '"""' | |
| ``` | |
| ### Changes to the tokenize module | |
| The `tokenize` module will be adapted to emit these tokens as described in the previous section | |
| when parsing f-strings so tools can take advantage of this new tokenization schema and avoid having | |
| to implement their own f-string tokenizer and parser. | |
| ### How to produce these new tokens | |
| One way existing lexers can be adapted to emit these tokens is to incorporate a | |
| stack of "lexer modes" or to use a stack of different lexers. This is because | |
| the lexer needs to switch from "regular Python lexing" to "f-string lexing" when | |
| it encounters an f-string start token and as f-strings can be nested, the | |
| context needs to be preserved until the f-string closes. Also, the "lexer mode" | |
| inside an f-string expression part needs to behave as a "super-set" of the | |
| regular Python lexer (as it needs to be able to switch back to f-string lexing | |
| when it encounters the `}` terminator for the expression part as well as | |
| handling f-string formatting and debug expressions). For reference, here is a | |
| draft of the algorithm to modify a CPython-like tokenizer to emit these new | |
| tokens: | |
| 1. If the lexer detects that an f-string is starting (by detecting the letter | |
| 'f/F' and one of the possible quotes) keep advancing until a valid quote is | |
| detected (one of `"`, `"""`, `'` or `'''`) and emit a | |
| `FSTRING_START` token with the contents captured (the 'f/F' and the | |
| starting quote). Push a new tokenizer mode to the tokenizer mode stack for | |
| "F-string tokenization". Go to step 2. | |
| 2. Keep consuming tokens until a one of the following is encountered: | |
| * A closing quote equal to the opening quote. | |
| * If in "format specifier mode" (see step 3), an opening brace (`{`), a | |
| closing brace (`}`), or a newline token (`\n`). | |
| * If not in "format specifier mode" (see step 3), an opening brace (`{`) or | |
| a closing brace (`}`) that is not immediately followed by another opening/closing | |
| brace. | |
| In all cases, if the character buffer is not empty, emit a `FSTRING_MIDDLE` | |
| token with the contents captured so far but transform any double | |
| opening/closing braces into single opening/closing braces. Now, proceed as | |
| follows depending on the character encountered: | |
| * If a closing quote matching the opening quite is encountered go to step 4. | |
| * If an opening bracket (not immediately followed by another opening bracket) | |
| is encountered, go to step 3. | |
| * If a closing bracket (not immediately followed by another closing bracket) | |
| is encountered, emit a token for the closing bracket and go to step 2. | |
| 3. Push a new tokenizer mode to the tokenizer mode stack for "Regular Python | |
| tokenization within f-string" and proceed to tokenize with it. This mode | |
| tokenizes as the "Regular Python tokenization" until a `:` or a `}` | |
| character is encountered with the same level of nesting as the opening | |
| bracket token that was pushed when we enter the f-string part. Using this mode, | |
| emit tokens until one of the stop points are reached. When this happens, emit | |
| the corresponding token for the stopping character encountered and, pop the | |
| current tokenizer mode from the tokenizer mode stack and go to step 2. If the | |
| stopping point is a `:` character, enter step 2 in "format specifier" mode. | |
| 4. Emit a `FSTRING_END` token with the contents captured and pop the current | |
| tokenizer mode (corresponding to "F-string tokenization") and go back to | |
| "Regular Python mode". | |
| Of course, as mentioned before, it is not possible to provide a precise | |
| specification of how this should be done for an arbitrary tokenizer as it will | |
| depend on the specific implementation and nature of the lexer to be changed. | |
| ### Consequences of the new grammar | |
| All restrictions mentioned in the PEP are lifted from f-string literals, as explained below: | |
| * Expression portions may now contain strings delimited with the same kind of | |
| quote that is used to delimit the f-string literal. | |
| * Backslashes may now appear within expressions just like anywhere else in | |
| Python code. In case of strings nested within f-string literals, escape sequences are | |
| expanded when the innermost string is evaluated. | |
| * New lines are now allowed within expression brackets. This means that these are now allowed: | |
| ``` | |
| >>> x = 1 | |
| >>> f"___{ | |
| ... x | |
| ... }___" | |
| '___1___' | |
| >>> f"___{( | |
| ... x | |
| ... )}___" | |
| '___1___' | |
| ``` | |
| * Comments, using the `#` character, are allowed within the expression part of an f-string. | |
| Note that comments require that the closing bracket (`}`) of the expression part to be present in | |
| a different line as the one the comment is in or otherwise it will be ignored as part of the comment. | |
| ### Considerations regarding quote reuse | |
| One of the consequences of the grammar proposed here is that, as mentioned above, | |
| f-string expressions can now contain strings delimited with the same kind of quote | |
| that is used to delimit the external f-string literal. For example: | |
| >>> f" something { my_dict["key"] } something else " | |
| In the [discussion thread for this PEP](https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-701-syntactic-formalization-of-f-strings/22046), | |
| several concerns have been raised regarding this aspect and we want to collect them here, | |
| as these should be taken into consideration when accepting or rejecting this PEP. | |
| Some of these objections include: | |
| * Many people find quote reuse within the same string confusing and hard to read. This is because | |
| allowing quote reuse will violate a current property of Python as it stands today: the fact that | |
| strings are fully delimited by two consecutive pairs of the same kind of quote, which by itself is a very simple rule. | |
| One of the reasons quote reuse may be harder for humans to parse, leading to less readable | |
| code, is that the quote character is the same for both start and | |
| end (as opposed to other delimiters). | |
| * Some users have raised concerns that quote reuse may break some lexer and syntax highlighting tools that rely | |
| on simple mechanisms to detect strings and f-strings, such as regular expressions or simple delimiter | |
| matching tools. Introducing quote reuse in f-strings will either make it trickier to keep these tools | |
| working or will break the tools altogether (as, for instance, regular expressions cannot parse arbitrary nested | |
| structures with delimiters). The IDLE editor, included in the standard library, is an example of a | |
| tool which may need some work to correctly apply syntax highlighting to f-strings. | |
| Here are some of the arguments in favour: | |
| * Many languages that allow similar syntactic constructs (normally called "string interpolation") allow quote | |
| reuse and arbitrary nesting. These languages include JavaScript, Ruby, C#, Bash, Swift and many others. | |
| The fact that many languages allow quote reuse can be a compelling argument in favour of allowing it in Python. This | |
| is because it will make the language more familiar to users coming from other languages. | |
| * As many other popular languages allow quote reuse in string interpolation constructs, this means that editors | |
| that support syntax highlighting for these languages will already have the necessary tools to support syntax | |
| highlighting for f-strings with quote reuse in Python. This means that although the files that handle syntax | |
| highlighting for Python will need to be updated to support this new feature, is not expected to be impossible | |
| or very hard to do. | |
| * One advantage of allowing quote reuse is that it composes cleanly with other syntax. Sometimes this is referred to | |
| as "referential transparency". An example of this is that if we have `f(x+1)`, assuming `a` is a brand new variable, it | |
| should behave the same as `a = x+1; f(a)`. And vice versa. So if we have: | |
| ``` | |
| def py2c(source): | |
| prefix = source.removesuffix(".py") | |
| return f"{prefix}.c" | |
| ``` | |
| It should be expected that if we replace the variable `prefix` with its definition, the answer should be the same: | |
| ``` | |
| def py2c(source): | |
| return f"{source.removesuffix(".py")}.c" | |
| ``` | |
| * Code generators (like [ast.unparse](https://docs.python.org/3/library/ast.html#ast.unparse) from standard library) in their | |
| current form rely on complicated algorithms to ensure expressions within an f-string are properly suited for the context in | |
| which they are being used. These non-trivial algorithms come with challenges such as finding an unused quote type (by tracking | |
| the outer quotes), and generating string representations which would not include backslashes if possible. Allowing quote reuse | |
| and backslashes would simplify the code generators which deal with f-strings considerably, as the regular Python expression logic | |
| can be used inside and outside of f-strings without any special treatment. | |
| * Limiting quote reuse will considerably increase the complexity of the implementation of the proposed changes. This is because | |
| it will force the parser to have the context that is parsing an expression part of an f-string with a given quote in order | |
| to know if it needs to reject an expression that reuses the quote. Carrying this context around is not trivial in parsers that | |
| can backtrack arbitrarily (such as the PEG parser). The issue becomes even more complex if we consider that f-strings can be | |
| arbitrarily nested and therefore several quote types may need to be rejected. | |
| To gather feedback from the community, | |
| [a poll](https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-701-syntactic-formalization-of-f-strings/22046/24) | |
| has been initiated to get a sense of how the community feels about this aspect of the PEP. | |
| ## Backwards Compatibility | |
| This PEP does not introduce any backwards incompatible syntactic or semantic changes | |
| to the Python language. However, the `tokenize` module (a quasi-public part of the standard | |
| library) will need to be updated to support the new f-string tokens (to allow tool authors | |
| to correctly tokenize f-strings). See `changes to the tokenize module`_ for more details regarding | |
| how the public API of `tokenize` will be affected. | |
| ## How to Teach This | |
| As the concept of f-strings is already ubiquitous in the Python community, there is | |
| no fundamental need for users to learn anything new. However, as the formalized grammar | |
| allows some new possibilities, it is important that the formal grammar is added to the | |
| documentation and explained in detail, explicitly mentioning what constructs are possible | |
| since this PEP is aiming to avoid confusion. | |
| It is also beneficial to provide users with a simple framework for understanding what can | |
| be placed inside an f-string expression. In this case the authors think that this work will | |
| make it even simpler to explain this aspect of the language, since it can be summarized as: | |
| You can place any valid Python expression inside an f-string expression. | |
| With the changes in this PEP, there is no need to clarify that string quotes are | |
| limited to be different from the quotes of the enclosing string, because this is | |
| now allowed: as an arbitrary Python string can contain any possible choice of | |
| quotes, so can any f-string expression. Additionally there is no need to clarify | |
| that certain things are not allowed in the expression part because of | |
| implementation restrictions such as comments, new line characters or | |
| backslashes. | |
| The only "surprising" difference is that as f-strings allow specifying a | |
| format, expressions that allow a `:` character at the top level still need to be | |
| enclosed in parenthesis. This is not new to this work, but it is important to | |
| emphasize that this restriction is still in place. This allows for an easier | |
| modification of the summary: | |
| You can place any valid Python expression inside | |
| an f-string expression, and everything after a `:` character at the top level will | |
| be identified as a format specification. | |
| ## Rejected Ideas | |
| #. Although we think the readability arguments that have been raised against | |
| allowing quote reuse in f-string expressions are valid and very important, | |
| we have decided to propose not rejecting quote reuse in f-strings at the parser | |
| level. The reason is that one of the cornerstones of this PEP is to reduce the | |
| complexity and maintenance of parsing f-strings in CPython and this will not | |
| only work against that goal, but it may even make the implementation even more | |
| complex than the current one. We believe that forbidding quote reuse should be | |
| done in linters and code style tools and not in the parser, the same way other | |
| confusing or hard-to-read constructs in the language are handled today. | |
| #. We have decided not to lift the restriction that some expression portions | |
| need to wrap `':'` and `'!'` in parentheses at the top level, e.g.: | |
| ``` | |
| >>> f'Useless use of lambdas: { lambda x: x*2 }' | |
| SyntaxError: unexpected EOF while parsing | |
| ``` | |
| The reason is that this will introduce a considerable amount of | |
| complexity for no real benefit. This is due to the fact that the `:` character | |
| normally separates the f-string format specification. This format specification | |
| is currently tokenized as a string. As the tokenizer MUST tokenize what's on the | |
| right of the `:` as either a string or a stream of tokens, this won't allow the | |
| parser to differentiate between the different semantics as that would require the | |
| tokenizer to backtrack and produce a different set of tokens (this is, first try | |
| as a stream of tokens, and if it fails, try as a string for a format specifier). | |
| As there is no fundamental advantage in being able to allow lambdas and similar | |
| expressions at the top level, we have decided to keep the restriction that these must | |
| be parenthesized if needed. When a lambda is used at the top level of a | |
| replacement field without them, the parser now names the problem directly, | |
| raising `f-string: lambda expressions are not allowed without parentheses` | |
| instead of the older, more cryptic failure, so the parenthesized form below is | |
| the obvious fix: | |
| ``` | |
| >>> f'Useless use of lambdas: { (lambda x: x*2) }' | |
| ``` | |
| #. We have decided to disallow (for the time being) using escaped braces (`\{` and `\}`) | |
| in addition to the `{{` and `}}` syntax. Although the authors of the PEP believe that | |
| allowing escaped braces is a good idea, we have decided to not include it in this PEP, as it is not strictly | |
| necessary for the formalization of f-strings proposed here, and it can be | |
| added independently in a regular CPython issue. | |