[Python-Dev] Python Library Addition: First-class Procedure Signatures

[Brett Cannon]

On Nov 15, 2007 12:48 PM, Steven Bethard <steven.bethard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Nov 14, 2007 1:18 PM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
> > On Nov 14, 2007 10:30 AM, Isaac Morland <ijmorlan at cs.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> > > So I wrote a Signature class.  Instances of the class represent all the
> > > information present between the parentheses of a procedure definition.
> > > Properties are provided to get the information out, and an expand_args method
> > > can be called to expand arguments into a dictionary.  This expand_args method
> > > implements (if I've done it right) the argument conversion part of section
> > > 5.3.4 of the Python Reference Manual (http://docs.python.org/ref/calls.html).
> >
> > As Collin already pointed out, it sounds like you want PEP 362 to get
> > into the stdlib.  I have not made a big push to try to get my existing
> > implementation into Python 2.6/3.0, but I plan to at some point.
>
> Every time I read PEP 362, I get lost in the details.  When you get
> around to working on it again, could you add a bunch of examples?
> That would make it much easier to tell why we want all those objects
> and attributes.
>

You might not need them in general.  It just re-packages all the
information that is found between a function object and a code object
into a single location.

> FWIW, Isaac's version of bind() that returns a regular str->object
> dict is all I've ever needed in my own code.

That's what the implementation does at the moment (if I remember correctly).

I am about to bundle up the code and submit to PyPI to get feedback
from folks and to just get it out there instead of languishing in the
sandbox while I try to decide exactly what to do about the open
issues.  I will see if i can toss in some examples into the PEP.

-Brett