A better self

[Erik Max Francis]

David LeBlanc wrote:

> Except, of course, "self" is not the name of the first argument, it's
> merely
> the identifier most often used for the first argument.

Sure, my suggestion was not meant to give any preference to `self' as
the Magical Self Argument*; the `.attribute' notation would simply be a
shortcut for `(first variable in argument list).attribute'.

Again, I'm not particularly fond of the proposal, although it certainly
is better than introducing some new punctuation pattern (I've seen
`@attribute' suggested for the same thing), but it doesn't seem right to
me to pretend that . is a legal name and then pretend like it isn't.

> I'm not sure what you meant by ".attribute should have an extra
> space...".

Thinko; I meant to say an extra _dot_, although the example which
followed probably got my point across anyway:  If `.' is the self
argument, then its attribute must be referenced by `..attribute', not
`.attribute'.

. 

* Perversity of choosing to name it something other than `self' aside, I
seem to recall some official Python documentation somewhere suggesting
that using a name other than `self' is not supported behavior (i.e., a
warning that at some future time its name of `self' might be enforced),
but a few furtive searches from time to time have failed to turn up what
I might have been remembering.  Does that ring any bells with anybody?

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