Raymond Hettinger schrieb:
d, g, v, t, r = model(somecontract)
I find that line quite unreadable, and find it likely that I would not be able to remember the standard order of the fields. You almost "had me" with the two fields example, but this makes me think "-1" again. Is it really that you need all these values in the following computation? For stat, this was never the case: you would only need some field normaly (especially when the more esoteric, platform-dependent fields got added). If you absolutely want tuple unpacking on a record-like object, I'd suggest to support explicit tuple conversion, like d, g, v, t, r = model(somecontract).to_tuple() Or, if you absolutely cannot stand the explicit tuple creation, add def __getitem__(self, index): return getattr(self, self.__slots__[index]) # or is it self.[self.__slots__[index]] :-? No need to inherit from tuple for that.
Of course, that specific example was solved long ago. We did not however expose a general purpose mechanism applicable where similar issues arise for other tuples.
As you've explained now, your use case is not similar. For os.stat, it's a means of transition and backwards compatibility. For your code, it seems you want it a permanent feature in your code. Regards, Martin