Behind the scene, I have something like: robot_dict = { 'robot' = CreateRobot( ..., name = 'robot') } and have mapped move() to correspond to robot_dict['robot'].move() (which does lots of stuff behind the scene.)
I have tested robot_dict[] with more than one robot (each with its own unique name) and am now at the point where I would like to have the ability to interpret something like:
alex = CreateRobot() anna = CreateRobot()
alex.move() anna.move()
etc. Since I want the user to learn Python's syntax, I don't want to require him/her to write alex = CreateRobot(name = 'alex') to then be able to do alex.move()
If you have access to the user module's text, something like this might be a nicer solution:
py> class Robot(object): ... def __init__(self): ... self.name = None ... def move(self): ... print "robot %r moved" % self.name ... py> class RobotDict(dict): ... def __setitem__(self, name, value): ... if isinstance(value, Robot): ... value.name = name ... super(RobotDict, self).__setitem__(name, value) ... py> user_code = """\ ... alex = Robot() ... anna = Robot() ... alex.move() ... anna.move()""" py> robot_dict = RobotDict() py> robot_dict['Robot'] = Robot py> exec user_code in robot_dict robot 'alex' moved robot 'anna' moved
Note that I provide a specialized dict in which to exec the user code -- this allows me to override __setitem__ to add the appropriate attribute to the Robot as necessary.
Steve -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
