title: Why is there no "compound method call statement", i.e. ".="?
body: <p>Lots of programming languages already have the compound statements <code>+=</code>, <code>-=</code>, <code>/=</code>, etc. A relatively new style of programming is to "chain" method calls onto each other, e.g. in Linq, JQuery and Django's ORM.</p>
  
  <p>I sometimes, more often than I'd like, find the need to do this in Django:</p>
  
  <pre><code># Get all items whose description beginning with A
  items = Items.objects.filter(desc__startswith='A')
  if something:
      # Filter further to items whose description also ends with Z
      items = items.filter(desc__endswith='Z')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I think it would be easier and actually more readable if there was a compound method call statement such as <code>.=</code> which could work like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>items = Items.objects.filter(desc__startswith='A')
  if something:
      items .= filter(desc__endswith='Z')
  </code></pre>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Are there any programming languages that support this or something like it?</li>
  <li>If the answer is no, why not?</li>
  <li>Is this style of programming really that new?</li>
  <li>Are there any PEPs (Python Enhancement Proposals) that support this idea?</li>
  </ul>