[Python-3000] Brainstorming: Python Metaprogramming

[Talin]

Ian Bicking <ianb <at> colorstudy.com> writes:


> > As a hypothetical example, supposed we defined a unary operator '?' such
that:
> > 
> >     ?x
> > 
> > was syntactic sugar for:
> > 
> >     quoted('x')
> > 
> > or even:
> > 
> >     quoted('x', (scope where x is or would be defined) )
> > 
> > Where 'quoted' was some sort of class that behaved like a reference to a
> > variable. So ?x.set( 1 ) is the same as x = 1.
> 
> Sounds like lambda x: ...

More differences than similarities, I think. For one thing, you can't use
lambda x: ... to assign to x. And while you could possibly overload the
arithmetic operators on a lambda, you'd have to do it for each lambda
individually, since lambdas don't have classes.

> > Moreover, you would want to customize all of the operators on quoted to
return
> > an AST, so that:
> > 
> >     ?x + 1
> > 
> > produces something like:
> > 
> >     (add, quoted('x'), 1)
> > 
> > ...or whatever data structure is convenient.
> 
> You can match the free variables from the lambda arguments against the 
> variables in the AST to get this same info.

I don't understand what this means.

Look, folks, I don't have a concrete proposal here. I'm actually fishing
for ideas, not looking to have my own ideas validated (or not.) My gut
tells me that there's something here worth looking into, but I haven't
put my finger on it yet.

(Isn't it interesting how often we programmers, who pride ourselves on our
use of logic and reason, so often use intuition and hunches to solve
problems?)

-- Talin