[Python-Dev] PEP 246: let's reset

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 01:49 AM 1/17/05 -0500, Glyph Lefkowitz wrote:
>On Sun, 2005-01-16 at 13:00 -0500, Phillip J. Eby wrote:
>
> > """One type is the "extender", ...
>
> > By contrast, an "independent adapter" ...
>
>I really like the way this part of the PEP is sounding, since it really
>captures two almost, but not quite, completely different use-cases, the
>confusion between which generated all the discussion here in the first
>place.  The terminology seems a bit cumbersome though.
>
>I'd like to propose that an "extender" be called a "transformer", since
>it provides a transformation for an underlying object - it changes the
>shape of the underlying object so it will fit somewhere else, without
>creating a new object.  Similarly, the cumbersome "independent adapter"
>might be called a "converter", since it converts A into B, where B is
>some new kind of thing.

Heh.  As long as you're going to continue the electrical metaphor, why not 
just call them transformers and appliances?  Appliances "convert" 
electricity into useful non-electricity things, and it's obvious that you 
can have more than one, they're independent objects, etc.  Whereas a 
transformer or converter would be something you use in order to be able to 
change the electricity itself.

Calling views and iterators "appliances" might be a little weird at first, 
but it fits.  (At one point, I thought about calling them "accessories".)


>If nobody likes this idea, it would seem a bit more symmetric to have
>"dependent" and "independent" adapters, rather than "extenders" and
>"independent adapters".  As it is I'm left wondering what the concept of
>dependency in an adapter is.

It's that independent adapters each have state independent from other 
independent adapters of the same type for the same object.  (vs. extenders 
having shared state amongst themselves, even if you have more than one)