[Python-Dev] pep 318, Decorators for Functions, Methods and Classes

[Guido van Rossum]

> On pep 318 (like everything else here).
> 
> Is it actually supposed to work for classes? like the
> pep title says.

Like so many things in the PEP, it's out of date.

> It doesn't seem to work, instead it issues a SyntaxError
> on the class keyword. Also, the discussion is completely
> focused on decorating functions and methods.

Some people have argued that it should work for classes (Java and C#
decorators work for any declaration).  I've never been convinced,
although I'm not dead set against it either.

It would seem that the functionality isn't quite as useful there; you
can get most of the same effects with metaclasses.  I'm not aware of
any idiom that takes a class and passes it through some kind of
wrapper or transformation *after* the class declaration; if somebody
is using this, it surely must be a very rare use indeed.

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