[Python-Dev] New syntax for 'dynamic' attribute access

[Anthony Baxter]

On Monday 12 February 2007 18:38, Neil Toronto wrote:
> Anthony Baxter wrote:
> > I have to say that I'm not that impressed by either the 1-arg
> > or 2-arg versions. Someone coming across this syntax for the
> > first time will not have any hints as to what it means - and
> > worse, it looks like a syntax error to me. -1 from me.
>
> I'm not sure the "looks like a syntax error" argument holds much
> weight, because any new syntax is likely to be a syntax error
> until the syntax is changed. :) 

Yes and no. My point is that it's extremely similar to existing 
syntax. (Worse yet, it looks the same but for what's possibly the 
smallest and hardest-to-see character in any character set)

"foo(baz)" vs "foo.(baz)" is... not good.

> "No hints" is a decent argument 
> against it, though. Parenthesis are already used for tuples,
> function calls, precedence, and generator comprehensions. The
> more something gets overloaded, the more ambiguous it looks. How
> about
>
>    obj.*str_expression
>
> instead? "*" is pretty common in the C family of languages as a
> dereferencing operator.

I don't know. This all still smacks of magic line noise to me :-) 
Although I should also add that after thinking about it a bit, I'm 
still not convinced this is something that needs shorthand syntax - 
particularly not one that's so line-noisy... 

Hey, we could always use backticks in Python 3.0! <wink>

Anthony