[Python-Dev] RFC: readproperty

[Jim Fulton]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> On 9/28/05, Jim Fulton <jim at zope.com> wrote:
> 
...
> I think we need to be real careful with chosing a name -- in Jim's
> example, *anyone* could assign to Spam().eggs to override the value.
> The name "readproperty" is too close to "readonlyproperty",

In fact, property creates read-only properties for new-style classes.
(I hadn't realized, until reading this thread, that for classic
classes, you could still set the attribute.)

 > but
> read-only it ain't! "Lazy" also doesn't really describe what's going
> on.

I agree.

> I believe some folks use a concept of "memo functions" which resemble
> this proposal except the notation is different: IIRC a memo function
> is always invoked as a function, but stores its result in a private
> instance variable, which it returns upon subsequent calls. This is a
> common pattern. Jim's proposal differs because the access looks like
> an attribute, not a method call. Still, perhaps memoproperty would be
> a possible name.
> 
> Another way to look at the naming problem is to recognize that the
> provided function really computes a default value if the attribute
> isn't already set. So perhaps defaultproperty?

Works for me.

Oleg Broytmann wrote:
 > On Wed, Sep 28, 2005 at 10:16:12AM -0400, Jim Fulton wrote:
 >
 >>   class readproperty(object):
 >
 > [skip]
 >
 >>I do this often enough
 >
 >
 >    I use it since about 2000 often enough under the name CachedAttribute:
 >
 > http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/ppa/qps/qUtils.py

Steven Bethard wrote:
 > Jim Fulton wrote:
 >
...
 > I've also needed behavior like this a few times, but I use a variant
 > of Scott David Daniel's recipe[1]:
 >
 > class _LazyAttribute(object):


Yup, the Zope 3 sources have something very similar:

http://svn.zope.org/Zope3/trunk/src/zope/cachedescriptors/property.py?view=markup

I actually think this does too much.  All it saves me, compared to what I proposed
is one assignment.  I'd rather make that assignment explicit.

Anyway, all I wanted with readproperty was a property that implemented only
__get__, as opposed to property, which implements __get__, __set__, and __delete__.

I'd be happy to call it readproprty or getproperty or defaulproperty or whatever. :)

I'd prefer that it's semantics stay fairly simple though.


Jim

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