[Python-Dev] PEP 549 vs. PEP 562

[Guido van Rossum]

I've pondered two PEPs that are in (friendly) competition with each other:

- PEP 549 -- Instance Descriptors (Larry Hastings)
- PEP 562 -- Module __getattr__ (Ivan Levkivskyi)

In the end I am *rejecting* PEP 549 and I hope to *accept* PEP 562, with a
small addition to the latter to also support overriding __dir__ (so that
one can provide a __dir__ implementation that matches the __getattr__
implementation, or perhaps counteracts it, in case one wants deprecated
attributes to be omitted from dir() but still usable).

The __dir__ addition is mentioned here:
https://github.com/ilevkivskyi/cpython/pull/3#issuecomment-343591293 .

A bit more motivation for my choice: re-reading PEP 549 reminded me of how
its implementation is remarkably subtle (invoking Armin Rigo; for more
details read https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0549/#implementation). On
the contrary, the implementation of PEP 562 is much simpler. With the Zen
of Python in mind, this gives a hint that it is the better idea, and
possibly even a good idea.

Ivan, once you've added the __dir__ thing to your PEP, please post it to
python-dev to solicit review from its (larger) readership.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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