[Python-ideas] "Loose" descriptors

[David Wilson]

On Sat, Mar 28, 2015 at 06:35:17PM -0400, James Edwards wrote:

> But my question is would it make sense to be able to do this sort of
> indirection for "loose" objects also, not just attributes of classes
> or instances?  In other words, could descriptors be extended so that
> they perform the same sort of indirection in the second example as the
> first?

FWIW you could probably experiment with this using PyPy's object spaces
feature without modifying the interpreter:

    http://pypy.readthedocs.org/en/latest/objspace-proxies.html

The 'exec' statement also indirectly supports a restrictive version of
this, by allowing dict subclasses to be provided for globals/locals.
Naturally the effect wouldn't carry over to function calls invoked by
the statement.

As a general comment, the ability to overload scope load/store seems
like an expert feature of questionable applicability. It's fun to play
with, but I'd hope to never encounter it in code intended for
maintainability.


David