Guido van Rossum
In case my point about the difference between thunks and other callables (specifically decorators) slipped by, consider the documentation for staticmethod, which takes a callable. All the staticmethod documentation says about that callable's parameters is: "A static method does not receive an implicit first argument" Pretty simple I'd say. Or classmethod: "A class method receives the class as implicit first argument, just like an instance method receives the instance." Again, pretty simple. Why are these simple? Because decorators generally pass on pretty much the same arguments as the callables they wrap. My point was just that because thunks don't wrap other normal callables, they can't make such abbreviations.
You've got the special-casing backwards. It's not thinks that are special, but staticmethod (and decorators in general) because they take *any* callable. That's unusual -- most callable arguments have a definite signature, think of map(), filter(), sort() and Button callbacks.
Yeah, that was why I footnoted that most of my use for callables taking callables was decorators. But while I don't use map, filter or Button callbacks, I am guilty of using sort and helping to add a key= argument to min and max, so I guess I can't be too serious about only using decorators. ;-) STeVe -- You can wordify anything if you just verb it. --- Bucky Katt, Get Fuzzy