[Python-Dev] Patch to use dict subclasses in eval(), exec

[David Ascher]

Guido van Rossum wrote:


 > I think (2) could be resolved using "ghosts" -- this is what Zope's
 > persistency mechanism uses.  The names must be present, but their
 > content is loaded on demand.  I expect that (1) probably could also be
 > solved this way.

That assumes that you can "preload" all of the names at initialization, correct? 
  IOW, that you know the contents of the namespace in advance.  Not a huge 
limitation, but not the same as lazy ghost-creation on lookup.

>>PS: Thinking of PHP, the fact that I can look up variables defined
>>in sessions or cookies or whatnot really really easily is one of the
>>reasons I'm liking PHP more than Python for web programming these
>>days.  I don't know enough of the technical details of the web to
>>know automatically where what data is stored and in what format --
>>and PHP doesn't make me.  Maybe web folks would use the
>>dict-subclass feature to emulate this aspect of PHP.
> 
> 
> But why not make it an attribute lookup?  That's how Zope (again :-)
> deals with this.  Remember acquisition? :-)

Yah, I remember.  I'm not saying that one can't come up with a pythonic yet 
low-impact way of presenting web constructs to users.  I guess I'm just 
expressing frustration with the fact that in PHP I don't really need to 
understand the web, whereas in Python I feel I have to.   Seems wrong. =)

--da