On Wed, 04 Aug 2004 09:46:55 -0400, Jim Fulton <jim@zope.com> wrote:
Terry Reedy wrote:
....
Decorators will add complexity, regardless of syntax.
Especially in their current over-powered form. If decorators didn't have to take arguments, then you could use a syntax like:
def classmethod foo(cls, ...): ...
This does add complexity, but I think it enhances understandability.
I understand why some people want to be able to pass arguments to decorators, but frankly, I find many of the examples of doing so down right scary.
I wonder if we should have add a note to the Python style guide that forbids such things from the standard library <0.2 wink>.
An advantage of the @ syntax is than it makes the complexiity separable and ignorable for someone learning/teaching basic Python,
I don't agree that they are ignorable. People will see them in code and will *have* to understand what they mean. Given sme examples I've seen here, this will sometimes be a significant chalenge.
It certainly depends on the use. I don't think @classmethod will be any more or less confusing than the current practice of calling foo = staticmethod(foo) after the def. I agree that more elaborate uses may be confusing; then again, I suspect that more elaborate code will be confusing regardless of how it uses decorators. Jeremy