Type checking in python?

[Eric Hopper]

In article <20000718231047.D4283 at xs4all.nl>, Thomas Wouters
<thomas at xs4all.net> wrote:
> 
> Well, I've more than once written a debug object that behaved like
> another object but with debug output. Without subclassing, because I
> would've had to override all methods anyway, and I didn't want the debug
> class to *do* anything.

This doesn't sound like a time to make use of generic programming.  It
sounds like a time for Python's incredibly wonderful reflection
capabilities.  Especially if you've done it more than once.

> If you insist on type-checking, do it the interface-way:
> 
> getattr(object, "required_method") getattr(object, "required_datatype")
> [etc]

	*shudder*

> Scoping is incredibly simple in Python. There's the local scope, and the
> global scope ;) It might take some getting used to if you're used to
> magic or explicit scopes, but it's definately very simple ;)

It is very simple.  I would prefer more nesting of scopes though.  In
particular, lambda expressions should have the local scope they're
declared in as their global scope.  I understand why they don't.  It's
because of how references to variables inside functions are optimized.

--
Eric Hopper (hopper at omnifarious.mn.org)  (http://www.omnifarious.org/~hopper)