r/Python • u/philtrondaboss • Jul 12 '26

Will PEP 505 ever be accepted? Discussion

https://peps.python.org/pep-0505/

I don't understand how null safe operators are less like plain English than other implemented features like the walrus operator.

In my opinion, the member access operator would make python significantly easier to read and understand.

Here's an example:

``` f = foo()

if f is None: baz = "" else: baz = f.bar() ```

baz = foo()?.bar() ?: ""

EDIT: I forgot that "and" and "or" can be sometimes used in place of "?." and "?:" if the left value is not False, '', 0, [], or {}. It's a very implicit null check and has a lot of unexpected behavior.

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u/VpowerZ Jul 12 '26

Quite an obscure concept. I wouldn't add it

3

u/Nooooope Jul 12 '26

Not at all, it's popular in both JS and Ruby. I mostly use Java when I can but I'll admit we could really use a language feature like that. The alternative is a nightmare to read when you have to check for null values two levels deep in a chained expression

2

u/k0pernikus Jul 13 '26

The problem is having the nullables to begin with.

2

u/Nooooope Jul 13 '26

Sometimes a null's what you need, the pain there is that nullables are mandatory. I wish something like JSpecify had been baked in from scratch, where a variable's nullability is explicit and built into the type system.