Has anyone else ever thought that it might be useful to access a function object from within the call?  I&#39;ve come across this situation a few times recently, and thought it would be very useful to be able to do something like, for example:<div>
<br></div><div>def a_function() as func:</div><div>    print(func.__doc__)</div><div><br></div><div>It would be useful, for example, to record state between calls, or if the function wants to reuse its own properties (like in the above example).  Consider a function which should print the number of times it has been called on every call</div>
<div><br></div><div>def counter(add) as func:</div><div>    if not hasattr(func, &#39;count&#39;):</div><div>        func.count = 0</div><div>    func.count += 1</div><div>    print(func.count)</div><div><br></div><div>This could also be implemented using classes, i.e.</div>
<div><br></div><div>class Counter:</div><div>    def __call__(self, add):</div><div>        if not hasattr(func, &#39;count&#39;):</div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div>            func.count = 0</div>
<div>        func.count += 1</div><div>        print(func.count)</div><div>counter = Counter()</div><div><br></div><div>But this is much more clumsy, results in an extra object (the Counter class) and will be quite complicated if counter is a method rather than a function.</div>
<div><br></div><div>The reason I&#39;ve used &quot;as&quot; syntax is that it is consistent with other python statements (e.g. &quot;with&quot; and &quot;except&quot;), wouldn&#39;t require a new keyword and is backwardly compatible.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Any thoughts?</div><div><br></div><div>David</div>