mystilleef wrote: > I decided to change the name of an attribute. Problem is I've used the > attribute in several places spanning thousands of lines of code. If I > had encapsulated the attribute via an accessor, I wouldn't need to do > an unreliable and tedious search and replace accross several source > code files to achieve my goal. I could simply change the name of the > attribute and move on. Well, I'm glad python has properties. It's a > feature that should be advertised more, especially for large scale > python development. > > Diez B. Roggisch wrote: > > mystilleef wrote: > > > > > Hello, > > > > > > What is the Pythonic way of implementing getters and setters. I've > > > heard > > > people say the use of accessors is not Pythonic. But why? And what is > > > the alternative? I refrain from using them because they smell > > > "Javaish." > > > But now my code base is expanding and I'm beginning to appreciate the > > > wisdom behind them. I welcome example code and illustrations. > > > > Which wisdom do you mean? The wisdom that a language that has no property > > mechanism and thus can't intercept setting and getting of instance members > > needs a bulky convention called JAVA Beans, so that _all_ uses of > > properties are tunneled through some code, even if only a few percent of > > these actually need that? > > > > Or the wisdom that strangling developers by putting access modifiers with > > approx. a dozen different rules in place is an annoyance to adult > > developers to say the least? > > > > These are the reasons they are not pythonic. We can intercept property > > access (see the property descriptor, http://pyref.infogami.com/property), > > and we trust in developers being able to judge form themselves if messing > > with internals of code is a good idea or not. > > > > Regards, > > > > Diez
The property() mechanism gets rid of the need for getters and setters, as you can invisibly change a member variable into a getter/setter as needed. Nothing else needs to know that its using a property and not a getter/setter. Nothing like being forced to write getters and setters in C++/Java before you feel like shooting your source code. Please don't bring this code-rage into Python. To refactor a name in your code, take a look at Bicycle Repair Man [http://bicyclerepair.sourceforge.net/]. It integrates into Eclipse via PyDev, and allows you to refactor variable names, class names, and method names fairly easily. Good luck! --Jason -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
