The Python release archive is a nice repository for archaeological findings. My biggest surprise was the existence of an access statement and access keyword in the pre-history of Python 1.5.0. The syntax was already specified in release 1.0 with an accompanying accessobject.c and it began to fade in Python 1.4.

The access statement

That is how the access statement was defined in 1.0

access_stmt: 'access' ( '*' | NAME ( ',' NAME ) * ) ':' accesstype ( ',' accesstype ) * accesstype: NAME+ # accesstype should be ('public' | 'protected' | 'private') ['read'] ['write'] # but can't be because that would create undesirable reserved words!

The access_stmt was a small statement i.e. one that doesn’t contain a block and could be used like print, del or exec.

So the proper use of the access statement would be like

class Point: access x , y , z: private write , public read

or more compact:

class Point: access *: private write , public read

The word public wasn’t a language keyword which made it possible to use it in this way:

class AccessModifier: access public: public access private: public access protected: public

Note that the access statement was purely declarative even more so than Java’s where you can write

public int x = 10;

x

read

write

How it never took off and gone away

and definewhile specifying its type and access modifier. It was also more elaborated in terms of intended protections by means of differentiating betweenand

In the HISTORY file of Python 1.0 we find the notice

There’s a new reserved word: “access”. The syntax and semantics are still subject of of research and debate (as well as undocumented), but the parser knows about the keyword so you must not use it as a variable, function, or attribute name.

In Python 1.4 the access statement was already uncommented from the Grammar.

The story ends with the following remark in the HISTORY of Python 1.5:

‘access’ is no longer a reserved word, and all code related to its implementation is gone (or at least #ifdef’ed out). This should make Python a little speedier too!

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