[Python-3000] PEP Parade

[Guido van Rossum]

On 5/1/07, Phillip J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:
> However, since your objections are more in the nature of general unease
> than arguments against, it probably doesn't make sense for me to continue
> quibbling with them point by point, and instead focus on how to move forward.

Thanks for indulging my insecurities.

> If you would like to require that the stdlib module use some sort of
> decorator (@overloadable, perhaps?) to explicitly mark a function as
> generic, that's probably fine, because the way it will work internally is
> that all the overloads still have to pass through a generic
> function...  which I can then easily add an overload to in a separate
> library, which will then allow direct modification of existing functions,
> without needing a decorator.  That way, we're both happy, and maybe by 3.1
> you'll be comfortable with dropping the extra decorator.  :)

I'll take my cue from the users.

> One possible issue, however, with this approach, is pydoc.  In all three of
> my existing generic function libraries, I use function objects rather than
> custom objects, for the simple reason that pydoc won't document the
> signatures of anything else.  On the other hand, I suppose there's no
> reason that the "make this overloadable" decorator couldn't just create
> another function object via compile or exec, whose implementation is fixed
> at creation time to do whatever lookup is required.

That's one solution. Another solution would be to use GFs in Pydoc to
make it overloadable; I'd say pydoc could use a bit of an overhault at
this point.

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