Python has the idiom he describes as a builtin. with open(filename) as f: ...your func goes here If you want to create your own custom one: @

Python has the idiom he describes as a builtin. with open(filename) as f: ...your func goes here If you want to create your own custom one: @contextlib.contextmanager def with_a_foo(...): foo = ... yield foo ...cleanup the foo... It's less terse (and in my opinion more readable [1]) than J, but same idea. [1] I very rarely find point free programming to be comprehensible. This may be my mental limitation.