I made a proposal with a modified grammar some years ago that would make {,}
the empty set. If there was a real desire for this, a similar change could be made so that both {,} == set()
and {:} == dict()
such that {}
could, eventually over a very long time, be removed.
One thing that actually changing the grammar unveiled was that once {,}
becomes a legal literal, it becomes extremely easy to make (,)
legal, which IMO is another wart on the language (parentheses don’t make tuples, commas do; oh, except for an empty tuple, then you must always use parentheses and no comma).