Brad wrote:
On Nov 25, 10:49 pm, Chris Rebert <c...@rebertia.com> wrote:
On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 6:35 PM, The Music Guy
<fearsomedragon...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello all,
I just posted to my blog about a feature that I'd like to see added to
Python. Before I go through the trouble of learning how to write a PEP or
how to extend the Python interpreter, I want to know what people in the
community have to say about it.
http://alphaios.blogspot.com/2009/11/python-string-inferred-names-wor...
As far as I know, a feature like this does not appear in any existing PEPs.
(If it does I would appreciate it if someone could tell me what PEP it is.)
Please give and comments you may have, but I request that you be
constructive if you must criticize...thank you!
Ugly, Perlish, and as you even admit, entirely unnecessary.
And you'd need to wait at least a year
anyway:http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3003/
Cheers,
Chris
--http://blog.rebertia.com
Like I said, lots of things in Python are "unnecessary," but that
doesn't make them "useless," and it certainly doesn't mean they
shouldn't exist. My proposed feature is not useless; I think it would
make a lot of code easier.
How is it easier than using dictionary with string as keys? setattr,
getattr, and delattr are already sugar for accessing instance.__dict__.
You make a comparison with decorators; even if it's unnecessary it does
eliminate a DRY case (don't repeat yourself):
def foo(self): pass
foo = property(foo)
there you repeat foo three times unnecessarily, instead of:
@property
def foo(self): pass
people already bashed decorator syntax because it is ungoogleable; a
non-python programmer reading a python code can't google "python @" to
find out that it's a decorator. $ has very similar problem; and we don't
want to add more of this wart.
You also make with iterators and generators. Iterator and generator is
an implication of the core design of python; because python chose not to
have a for-loop (python's "for-loop" is actually a for-each-loop).
Without the iterator protocol, it is not possible to make an iterable
class and people would have to use "for x in range(len(foo)):" every so
often. Iterator protocol also makes it possible to have infinite
iterable (e.g. for x in primegenerator(): produces prime numbers
indefinitely).
A list comprehension is space saver; it saves a lot of lines for the
very common operation:
a = []
for x in orig:
if test(x):
a.append(transform(x))
into one concise line:
a = [transform(x) for x in orig if test(x)]
Also a generator comprehension can be passed around without being evaluated.
As you see, these "unnecessary features" does have significant benefits
to it. Decorators reduced DRY, iterators/generators eliminates the need
of range-len for-loop, list comprehension is huge space saver.
The proposed syntax only saves a few character, does not eliminate any
DRY, is ungoogleable, and looks confusing to me. Is there any
significant benefit from it?
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