"Phillip J. Eby" <pje@telecommunity.com> writes:
@staticmethod def foo(a,b,c): pass
[staticmethod] def foo(a,b,c): pass
and
def foo(a,b,c) [staticmethod]: pass
Hey - guess what? Writing them out like that, I find that my initial preference for the 3rd one has gone. To be honest, I no longer have a strong opinion between the three. In fact, if anything, I'd say I have a very mild preference for Guido's option (number 2). I dislike the ambiguity problem with it, though.
IMO, the ambiguity is resolved if some kind of visible invocation occurs, e.g.:
[declare_staticmethod()] def foo(a,b,c): pass
While '[staticmethod]' by itself may appear to be a useless and ignorable statement, adding the () makes it clear that you have to know what the called function *does* before you could consider removing the statement.
When you add in the fact that this syntax can be made to work in Python 2.2 and better, not just 2.4, it makes the syntax a big winner in my book.
I would like to reverse the application order, though: Guido's patch uses the same order for syntax 2 as for syntax 3, and now that I've played with syntax 2 "for real", I think that right-to-left application should be used for any syntax where the decorators come before the 'def'.
Here's another syntactic idea that could be made to work without core language changes: [as.staticmethod] def foo(a,b,c): pass I think that one's pretty sweet. It can be extended any number of ways: [as.staticmethod, as.classmethod, ...] def foo(a,b,c): pass [as.staticmethod|classmethod| ...] def foo(a,b,c): pass -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting http://www.boost-consulting.com