[Python-Dev] PEP 318 - generality of list; restrictions on elements

Aahz aahz at pythoncraft.com
Wed Mar 10 20:43:20 EST 2004


On Thu, Mar 11, 2004, Greg Ewing wrote:
> Aahz <aahz at pythoncraft.com>:
>> 
>> Maybe I'm misunderstanding something.  I thought that a property
>> contains a get descriptor, which makes it a kind of callable.
>
> A property is a descriptor which *contains* up to 3 callables (for
> get, set, del), but descriptors themselves are not callable.
>
> This is one reason we can't require the result of a decorator
> to be callable. That would immediately rule out classmethod and
> staticmethod, which return descriptors, not callables!

That's why I said "kind of callable"; from the user's POV, they act like
callables because you invoke them with call syntax, just like methods.
As I noted, I'm not sure it's even possible to enforce that kind of
restriction, but I think it's desirable to document.  Guido has
pronounced, so it's a dead issue, though.
-- 
Aahz (aahz at pythoncraft.com)           <*>         http://www.pythoncraft.com/

"Do not taunt happy fun for loops. Do not change lists you are looping over."
--Remco Gerlich, comp.lang.python



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