[Python-ideas] Cofunctions - an enhancement to yield-from

Greg Ewing greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz
Sun Aug 1 12:09:55 CEST 2010


I've been thinking about this idea for a while, and now
that I've got yield-from nailed down to my satisfaction,
I thought I'd put it out there to see if anyone else
thinks it would be a good thing.

Cofunctions
-----------

A drawback of 'yield from' as a coroutine mechanism is that it must
be used every time a function forming part of a coroutine calls
another function that can suspend the coroutine, either directly
or indirectly.

This makes the code read somewhat awkwardly and provides many
opportunities for the programmer to make errors. It also introduces
considerable coupling, since changing one's mind about whether a
function needs to be suspendable requires revisiting all the call
sites of that function.

This proposal builds on the 'yield from' proposal by introducing a
new kind of function that I will call a "cofunction".

A cofunction is a special kind of generator, with the following
characteristics:

- It is defined by using the keyword 'codef' in place of 'def'.

- It is always a generator, even if it does not contain any yields.

- Whenever a call is made inside a cofunction, it is done using a
   special COCALL opcode. This first looks for a __cocall__ method
   on the object being called. If present, it is expected to
   return an iterable object, which is treated as though 'yield from'
   had been performed on it.

   If the object being called does not have a __cocall__ method,
   or it returns NotImplemented, the call is made in the usual way
   through the __call__ method.

- Cofunctions themselves have a __cocall__ method that does the
   same thing as __call__.

Using these cofunctions, it should be possible to write coroutine code
that looks very similar to ordinary code. Cofunctions can call both
ordinary functions and other cofunctions using ordinary call syntax.
The only special consideration is that 'codef' must be used to define
any function that directly or indirectly calls another cofunction.

A few subtle details:

- Ordinary generators will *not* implement __cocall__. This is so
   that a cofunction can e.g. contain a for-loop that iterates over
   a generator without erroneously triggering yield-from behaviour.

- Some objects that wrap functions will need to be enhanced with
   __cocall__ methods that delegate to the underlying function.
   Obvious ones that spring to mind are bound methods, staticmethods
   and classmethods.

   Returning NotImplemented is specified as one of the possible
   responses of __cocall__ so that a wrapper can report that the
   wrapped object does not support __cocall__.

-- 
Greg




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