On Sep 12, 6:21 am, Charles Fox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I've just started playing around with Python, as a possible
> replacement for a mix of C++, Matlab and Lisp. The language looks
> lovely and clean with one huge exception: I do a lot of numerical
> modeling, so I deal with objects (like neurons) described
> mathematically in papers, by equations like
> a_dot = -k(a-u)
> In other languages, this translates nicely into code, but as far as I
> can tell, Python needs the ugly:
> self.a_dot = -self.k(self.a-self.u)
> For large equations this is going to make my code seriously unreadable
> to the point of needing to switch back to Matlab -- and it seems to go
> against everything else about python's simplicity and elegance. Am I
> missing something? Is there something like a 'with' command that lets
> me set the scope, like
>
> with self:
> .a_dot = -.k(.a-.u)
>
> It's premature to make language suggestions as I am new to the
> language, but I would have though that making a 'with self' explicit
> in all methods would have been neat, so I could just write
> .a_dot = -.k(.a-.u)
> which would still avoid confusion with local function variables, since
> '.a' is different from 'a'.
>
> Please help if I am missing something -- this looks like a great
> language but I am going to mad trying to read numerical code full of
> 'self.'s breaking up the equations.
Just an idea: I think that if you have to get a more readable code
you
could abstract the function from the object using a significative
name and then use this named function passing **self.__dict__
For example in your module you could write:
#------ functional section -----------
def dothis(k,a,u):
return k*(a-u)
def dothat(m,r,k):
return m*r+(k.m)^m
#----- Class definition ------
class Bar(object):
def foo(self):
self.a_dot = dothis(**self.__dict__)
self.boo = dothat(**self.__dict__)
In this way the functional part is pure expression and very readable.
HTH
G.
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