On Wed, 2003-09-24 at 18:27, Tim Hochberg wrote:
Hi Todd,
There are three ways to spell "defer to me" on the table (the precise details of each spelling are, of course, still open for debate):
numarray.defer_to(my_class)
class ArrayLike(numarray.DeferTo): # ...
class ArrayLike: _numarray_defer_to = True # ...
I'd prefer a non-registration solution since those are both aesthetically displeasing and leave you open to the situation where a class in module A gets registered by module B, but module C expects it not to be registered and everything breaks. Not all that likely, I admit, but let's avoid the registration version if we can.
I was picturing this as module A registering it's own classes only. Nevertheless, inverting the problem and distributing the registration as you suggested is better.
The other two solutions are almost equivalent. The one case where 3 has an edge over 2 is if I have an object (not a class), I could potentially set a _numarray_defer_to on the object before passing it to numarray without having to mess with the class of the object at all. YAGNI, though.
I was more concerned about the potential impact of lots of multiple inheritance, but that's probably just my own personal blend of FUD.
The advantage of 2 in my view is that it *does* force you to subclass. With 3, there will be the temptation to poke into some other module and set _numarray_defer_to on some poor unsuspecting class. This has the same disadvantage as 1, that it could confuse some other poor unsuspecting module. The correct way to do get a deferred class from a third party module is to import and subclass. This works with either 2 or 3::
import A
class Klass2(a.Klass, numarray.DeferTo): #2 #...
class Klass3(a.Klass): #3 the good way _numarray_defer_to = True # ...
A.Klass._numarray_defer_to = True #3 the evil way.
Version 2 is cleaner and encourages you to do the right thing, so I'd prefer that solution.
Good enough for me. If no one else has any comments, then numarray.DeferTo is where I'll start implementing. Tomorrow.
regards,
-tim
Thanks again, Todd