[Python-ideas] Proposal for new-style decorators

[Steven D'Aprano]

Christophe Schlick wrote:

> * Is the idea interesting enough to deserve consideration for possible
> inclusion in the language? If yes, should I transform this proposal
> into a PEP, or should there first be some pre-PEP discussion here (or
> maybe in python-dev)?

Decorators were one of the biggest successes in recent years, so we 
would be foolish to dismiss the idea of simplifying them out of hand. 
But I think you are doing yourself a disservice by referring to this 
proposal as "new syntax". Normally when people talk about syntax, they 
are referring to language syntax (i.e. a change to the Python 
interpreter), and we're pretty conservative about adding new syntax.

It seems to me that you're talking about a new idiom for building 
decorator functions, not new syntax.

I would suggest you also publish this decorator-builder recipe on 
ActiveState's Python cookbook, and see if you get much interest there. 
It might also help to post a link to your recipe to 
python-list at python.org. You certainly should do those things before 
going to python-dev.



> * Are there some pitfalls involved with the use of NSD that I haven't
> seen? Or are there additional desirable elements that could be easily
> included?


Have you timed the decorated function using new and old style? If you 
decorator a function with (say) 5 arguments, is there any performance 
hit to your NSD?

Do you have any tests for it? E.g. unit tests, regression tests? Your 
code looks opaque and complicated to me, I would want to see a good test 
suite before even considering using it in production code, let alone in 
the standard library.




-- 
Steven