[Python-ideas] Bug? Feature? setattr(foo, '3', 4) works!

[Nick Coghlan]

On 19 December 2014 at 21:17, Cem Karan <cfkaran2 at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On Dec 19, 2014, at 6:03 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On 19 December 2014 at 20:57, Cem Karan <cfkaran2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > But, getting back to the main question, is this a bug or a feature?  I
> personally feel like this is a bug, and I'd like to both clarify it in the
> language spec, and have cpython modified to enforce the syntax, regardless
> of how you try to mess with an attribute.  How does everyone else feel
> about this?
> >
> > Namespaces are just dictionaries. The one thing implementations may do
> is to place a type restriction on the keys, so they throw TypeError if you
> try to use something other than str (although *CPython* doesn't do that).
> >
> > getattr/setattr/delattr would never throw SyntaxError though - that's
> only thrown by the compiler.
>
> I see what you're saying, but I feel like having (get|set|has)attr throw
> TypeError instead of SyntaxError would itself be astonishing in this case.
> The feature I'm after is that "foo.3" results in exactly the same behavior
> as "getattr(foo, '3')".
>

I can probably save you some time: not going to happen :)

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
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