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

[Delaney, Timothy (Tim)]

Benji York wrote:

> Collin Winter wrote:
>> On 2/12/07, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
>>> I actually kind of like that.  The connection to pointer indirection
>>> meshes well with the idea of indirectly figuring out what attribute
>>> to access at runtime.
>> 
>> There's a connection, but I'd say it's the wrong one. In C, "x->y"
>> dereferences x, while in Python, "x->y" would dereference y. That's
>> just begging for trouble.
> 
> Then the syntax should obviously be "x<-y".

I'd actually gone through this process myself, and concluded that I
wouldn't be happy with either.

"x->y: is currently invalid syntax, but has *very* strong connotations
from C. Whilst I'm happy to consider things that deviate from other
languages' use, this one is just too strong.

"x<-y" is currently valid syntax, and gives (to mee) the wrong
impression that y is that thing that's going to be modified.

Of all the proposals I've seen, I think I like "x.{y}" best. The use of
{} has connotations of interpolation and they're the only braces that
currently don't have meaning as x{} (and probably never will).

I do worry that giving syntax to getattr/setattr/delattr will encourage
the use of dynamic attributes, when they are a fairly advanced feature.
OTOH, when you're using advanced features, you want the code to be as
readable as possible, and I think this will improve readability over
using getattr/setattr/delattr.

So I think I've changed to +0.5.

Tim Delaney