[Python-ideas] Assignment decorators (Re: The Descriptor Protocol...)

[Jim Jewett]

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 7:52 PM, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> Jim Jewett wrote:
>
>> Though I personally suspect that if the name of the variable is
>> needed, it is really a slot rather than a discardable name, and it
>> really *should* be a slightly different object -- a decorable pointer
>> instead of just a pointer.

> If you mean that the thing passed in as the name should be
> some object other than a string, can you provide a use case?

No, I mean that the name itself should be more than just a pointer to
an object.

It should of course *include* a pointer to an object (the bound
value), but it should *also* have its own independent existence,
regardless of whatever it happens to be pointing to.  Effectively, it
should be a proxy object, rather than a simple pointer.  That way, the
pointer-holder can be constrained (e.g., hold only a string) or asked
for its name, or annotated with documentation, or ...

-jJ