[Python-ideas] Delayed Execution via Keyword

[David Mertz]

On Fri, Feb 17, 2017 at 9:45 PM, David Mertz <mertz at gnosis.cx> wrote:

> That will make it pretty much impossible to tell whether something is a
>>
> delayed "thunk" or not, since *any* attempt to inspect it in any way
>> will cause it to reify. Maybe that's what we want.
>
>
> This feels like a disadvantage, and an important one.  Most "normal"
> programmers should never have to care whether something is delayed or has
> been concretized already.  But people writing debuggers, profilers, etc.
> really do want to know.
>
> There should be some way at poking at an object if you really want to
> without concretizing it.  I wouldn't care if this was some ugly and obscure
> device like 'inspect._is_delayed(my_obj._co_delayed)' that has different
> semantics than other function calls.  Maybe "the uglier the better" in this
> case, since it *should* be reserved for special purposes only.
>

If we assume idempotency (which I'm not certain whether we can/should) then
we could spell the check like this:

    if delayed delayed my_obj is delayed my_obj:
        print("Yep, it's delayed and I haven't concretized it")

That has the dual advantages of being both ugly and obvious.

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