[Python-Dev] PEP 309: Partial method application

[Guido van Rossum]

On 8/18/05, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:
> As for the more general proposal: -1 on more places to pass strings to
> denote method/function/class names. These are ugly to type.

Agreed.

> What I think you want is not a partial method, instead, you want to
> turn a method into a standard function, and in a 'virtual' way.
> 
> So I would propose the syntax
> 
>   lst.sort(key=virtual.lower) # where virtual is functional.virtual

I like this, but would hope for a different name -- the poor word
'virtual' has been abused enough by C++.

> P.S. It's not even clear that this should be added to functional,
> as attrgetter and itemgetter are already in operator. But, perhaps,
> they should be in functional.

They feel related to attrgetter more than to partial.

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