Jim Jewett wrote:
On Sun, Aug 24, 2008 at 6:43 PM, Russ Paielli <russ.paielli@gmail.com> wrote:
... I fully understand the history and controversy regarding the explicit use of "self" in Python.
One of the problems with the current syntax is that calling sites don't match the definition site the way they do for normal functions. This proposal doesn't seem to help with that.
Normal function --
def fn(a, b, z=None): ...
fn(a, b, z) fn(a, b)
Method --
Methods are normal functions accessed through a class attribute binding. In 3.0, the unbound method wrapper that might have obscured this is gone.
def m(self, a, b, z=None): ...
# self is moved outside the parens, changing the tuple size self.m(a, b, z) self.m(a, b)
If m is an attribute of type(s) (which is s.__class__), this shrinkage is a convenient abbreviation, not a requirement. The above calls are the same as type(s).m(s.a,b,z) or type(s).m(s,a,b). Or, if you prefer, fn = type(s).m # or s.__class__.m fn(s,a,b,z) If m is an attribute s, and s in not a class, the shrinkage is not available, and one must write s.m(s,a,b,z) or s.m(s.a,b). Terry Jan Reedy