[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> While working on type expressions I am rather stuck for a
> way to express recursive types. A simple example of this is a
> singly-linked list of integers. In some languages you have compiler
> syntax
> which suspends evaluation so you can have recursive types. e.g.
>
> typedef Linked_List := int, Linked_List
>
> In LISP I would use a macro.
>
> I have tried using classes:
>
> class Linked_List(object):
> typedef = (int, Linked_List)
>
> The closest I have got in Python is the following:
>
> Linked_List = (int, lambda: Linked_List) # linked list of int
>
> this is OK, because lambda makes closure which is not executed. However
> it required the user of the type expression to call any lfunctions
> found whilst traversing the tree.
>
> To make this a little more OO, I could use a constructor to wrap the
> function:
>
> Linked_List = (int, recursive(lambda: Linked_List)) # linked
> list of int
>
> but I am not satisfied with the "look".
>
> Any suggestions?
(1) Wait until the class is defined:
class LinkedList: pass
LinkedList.typedef = int, LinkedList
or
(2) Use a marker object as a placeholder for the class yet to be defined.
Fancy example:
SELF = object()
def fix_typedef(td, cls):
for item in td:
if item is SELF:
yield cls
else:
yield item
class Type(type):
def __new__(*args):
cls = type.__new__(*args)
try:
typedef = cls.typedef
except AttributeError:
pass
else:
cls.typedef = tuple(fix_typedef(typedef, cls))
return cls
class TypeDef:
__metaclass__ = Type
class LinkedList(TypeDef):
typedef = (int, SELF)
print LinkedList.typedef
# (<type 'int'>, <class '__main__.LinkedList'>)
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