[Python-3000] symbols?

[Guido van Rossum]

On 4/18/06, Jim Jewett <jimjjewett at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was still thinking of symbols, and reading ".name" as syntactic
> sugar for "self.name", with the caveat that the translation was made
> at runtime rather that compile-time.
>
> Therefore
>
>     property(._get_x, ._set_x)
>
> would be syntactic sugar for
>
>     def __getx(self):  return self._get_x()
>     def __setx(self):  return self._set_x()
>     property(__getx, __setx)
>
> except that the __getx and __setx methods wouldn't be added to the
> visible namespace, even in mangled form.

Please stop. This is getting ridiculous. Do you realize that you are
describing that the expression

    .foo

is syntactic sugar for

    lambda self: self._foo()

?

That's not what I would call a "symbol type" by any stretch of the imagination.

(And if you're claiming that

    .foo

is not "an expression" then how can it appear syntactically in the
position of a parameter?)

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