[Python-Dev] Getting rid of unbound methods: patch available

[Noam Raphael]

Hello,

I would like to add here another small thing which I encountered this
week, and seems to follow the same logic as does Guido's proposal.

It's about staticmethods. I was writing a class, and its
pretty-printing method got a function for converting a value to a
string as an argument. I wanted to supply a default function. I
thought that it should be in the namespace of the class, since its
main use lies there. So I made it a staticmethod.

But - alas! After I declared the function a staticmethod, I couldn't
make it a default argument for the method, since there's nothing to do
with staticmethod instances.

The minor solution for this is to make staticmethod objects callable.
This would solve my problem. But I suggest a further step: I suggest
that if this is done, it would be nice if classname.staticmethodname
would return the classmethod instance, instead of the function itself.
I know that this things seems to contradict Guido's proposal, since he
suggests to return the function instead of a strange object, and I
suggest to return a strange object instead of a function. But this is
not true; Both are according to the idea that class attributes should
be, when possible, the same objects that were created when defining
the class. This is more consistent with the behaviour of modules
(module attributes are the objects that were created when the code was
run), and is more consistent with the general convention, that running
A = B
causes
A == B
to be true. Currently, Class.func = staticmethod(func), and Class.func
= func, don't behave by this rule. If the suggestions are accepted,
both will.

I just think it's simpler and cleaner that way. Just making
staticmethods callable would solve my practical problem too.

Noam Raphael