On Wed, 2006-11-08 at 12:37 -0800, John Henry wrote: > I must be very thick. I keep reading about what decorators are and I > still don't have a good feel about it. See, for example: > > http://alex.dojotoolkit.org/?p=564 > > and: > > http://soiland.no/software/decorator > > What exactly do I use decorators for?
Decorators are a tool for executing common code when a function is defined and/or when it's called. This reduces code duplication by allowing you to factor out commonly performed steps. If you find yourself writing different functions that share a lot of setup/teardown code, or if you find yourself doing a lot of repetitive housekeeping for each function you're defining, decorators eliminate this duplication. You've already been given a bunch of different examples, so I won't bore you with more contrived examples. If none of the examples make you say "wow, I could use this" and if you don't find yourself writing repetitive setup/teardown/housekeeping code, you can probably live quite comfortably without using decorators. -Carsten -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
