[Edu-sig] Re: A better way?
Beni Cherniavsky
cben at users.sf.net
Fri Dec 3 11:43:03 CET 2004
Jeff Sandys wrote:
> I showed this thread at the SeaPIG meeting and we
> talked about handling attributes. I pointed out
> that the dot is an operator and that you can have
> a space between the dot, and the group didn't
> believe me until they tried it.
>
>>>>s = "my string"
>>>>s . split()
>
> ['my', 'string']
>
> I think by showing the students that dot is an
> operator helps them understand what is going on
> and they might not be so concerned about making
> the long variable and method dotted chains.
>
It's important that they realize that the dot is not a pure operator as the
rest of Pythons operators: the thing on its right side is not an arbitrary
expression but an identifier. So you can't do ``foo . (bar + baz)`` the way
you can do ``foo * (bar + baz)``. Showing the equivallence to `getattr()` is
a nice way to demonstarte the fact the right argument is not an expression
evaluated in the current environment but actually just a string.
--
Beni Cherniavsky <cben at users.sf.net>, who can only read email on weekends.
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