[Python-ideas] Fwd: Define a method or function attributeoutsideof a class with the dot operator

[Mark E. Haase]

On Sun, Feb 12, 2017 at 11:51 AM, Markus Meskanen <markusmeskanen at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> 2. To register callbacks to objects, i.e. plain out set an attribute for
> an instance. I've used the menu example above:
>
>   class Menu:
>       def __init__(self, items=None, select_callback=None):
>           self.items = items if items is not None else []
>           self.select_callback = select_callback
>
>   my_menu = Menu(['Pizza', 'Cake', 'Pasta'])
>   def my_menu.select_callback(item_index):
>       if item_index == 0:  # Pizza
>           serve_food(pizza)
>       else:  # Cake or Pasta
>           ...
> This is just one example of using it to set an instance's variable to a
> callback. It's just shorthand for:
>
>   def select_callback(item_index):
>       ...
>   my_menu.select_callback = select_callback
>

One issue that has been overlooked so far in this thread is that
hypothetical use cases are not as important as real-world use cases. One
way that PEPs can demonstrate real-world relevance is by demonstrating the
effect on some important libraries, e.g. the standard library.

For example, asyncio.Future (and concurrent.futures.Future) has a list of
callbacks and the API has add_done_callback() and remove_done_callback()
functions for manipulating the callback list. The proposed syntax doesn't
cooperate with these callbacks:

  f = asyncio.Future()

  def my_callback(x):
    ...

  f.add_done_callback(my_callback)

How should I write this using the proposed syntax? If the proposal doesn't
generalize well enough to cover existing callback patterns in Python's own
standard library, then that is a significant weakness.

Please keep this in mind as you write the PEP.
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