[Python-Dev] Wrapping up 'dynamic attribute' discussion

[Greg Falcon]

On 2/15/07, Anthony Baxter <anthony at interlink.com.au> wrote:
> On Friday 16 February 2007 09:08, Ben North wrote:
> > The wrapper class idea was left
> > open as a possibility for a future PEP.
>
> A good first step would be to contribute something like this to the
> Python Cookbook, if it isn't already there.

I could not find such a class in the cookbook.  (That's not to say
there's not one there that I missed.)

Because I think attrview() should happen, I submitted a recipe to the
Python Cookbook.  While it awaits editor approval, I have it posted at
http://www.verylowsodium.com/attrview.py .

One possibly controversial design choice here: since there is no
guaranteed way to enumerate attributes in the face of __getattr__ and
friends, my version of attrview() does not provide iteration or any
other operation that assumes object attributes can be enumerated.
Therefore, it technically does not implement a mapping.

Once Python grows a __dir__ special method, it's possible I could be
convinced this is the wrong choice, but I'm not sure of that.

Greg F