[Python-Dev] Re: decorators and 2.4

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 08:26 AM 6/25/04 -0400, David Abrahams wrote:
>"Phillip J. Eby" <pje at telecommunity.com> writes:
> > You'd need to do something like keep a copy of the locals and on
> > each "new line" event from the trace hook, you'd need to both call
> > the old trace hook (so that debugging could still take place) and
> > check to see if the locals had a new function object.  As soon as
> > the function object appeared, you could do your dirty work (after
> > first restoring the *old* value bound to that name, so the
> > decorators would have access to the previous binding of the name).
>
>I'm perfectly happy for this decorate function to work on the very
>next name binding; I don't think it's reasonable to expect to be able
>to do anything else between it and the function definition.

Keep in mind that this means code like this:

decorate(foo)
decorate(bar(baz=[x*2 for x in y]))
def spam():
     pass

Will likely fail horribly, applying the 'foo' decorator to the first 
element of 'y' before trying to multiply by 2, or worse, possibly applying 
them to the "anonymous" list object that's created to hold the results of 
the list comprehension.  Or, it might sometimes *seem* to work due to 
hashing order and the vagaries of when 'line' events fire, and then fail in 
a new release of Python.  This is why I consider it somewhat of a wart in 
the current implementation, as I note below...


> > Anyway, it works with CPython 2.2.  Caveat: do *not* use listcomps or
> > any other assignment statements between your 'decorate()' invocation
> > and the function definition, or the decorators will be applied to the
> > bound-to variable!
> >
> > Personally, I think the 'decorate()' function is probably actually not
> > that useful, compared to making specialized decoration functions like,
> > say:
> >
> >     classmethod_follows()
> >     def foo(klass, x, y, z):
> >         # ...
>
>Ick!

Is it the name you dislike?  Or the idea of simply invoking decorating 
functions directly?



> > Only with better names.  :)  Also, using this approach means you can
> > do something like:
> >
> >      [classmethod_follows()]
>
>Ick in brackets ;-> !