[Python-3000] symbols?

[Guido van Rossum]

On 4/18/06, Jim Jewett <jimjjewett at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/14/06, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> > Then, on 4/14/06, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> > [...]
> > class C:
> >   x = property(._get_x, ._set_x, ._del_x,
> >                "This is the x property")
> > [...]
>
> > This is slightly more Pythonic, and unambiguous, but I'd rather
> > reserve leading dot for a more powerful feature, perhaps .foo as an
> > abbreviation for self.foo, or some other scope-ish operator. (I also
> > note that in a proportional font the . is easily missed.)
>
> Does that conflict?  Wouldn't self._get_x fall through to
> self.__class__._get_x, which is exactly what you want?  (Except that
> you *might* the ability to override methods on a per-instance basis.)

Not in this context. When the expression "property(._get_x, ._set_x,
...)" is evaluated, there is no self yet (unless it is an unrelated
outer self).

> > So this begs the question: would the following assertion pass or fail?
> >
> >     assert .foo == "foo"
> >
> > What about this one?
> >
> >     assert type(.foo) == str
>
> If .foo is a syntactic change, it might not require that an object be
> created (for the name) at all.

We may be misunderstanding each other, but I don't see how, if ".foo"
is used as an expression, it can not return some object.

--
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)