Forgetting "()" when calling methods

[Andrew Bennetts]

On Sat, Apr 26, 2003 at 10:15:03PM -0700, Jeremy Fincher wrote:
> Frantisek Fuka <fuka at fuxoft.cz> wrote in message news:<b8cadp$1fj9$1 at ns.felk.cvut.cz>...
> > When I try to call methods, I sometimes forget to include the 
> > parentheses. Instead of:
> > 
> > if object.isGreen():
> > 	do something...
> > 
> > i sometimes write:
> > 
> > if object.isGreen:
> > 	do something...
> 
> Perhaps the answer is to remove the __nonzero__ method on
> functions/methods.  Logically, what purpose does it serve?

As I posted earlier in this thread, it allows this idiom:

        # Call the handler for this, if one exists
        handler = getattr(self, 'handler_' + name, None)
        if handler:
            handler(data)

I can see similar uses for another type of callable: classes.  E.g.:

    class XylophonePacket(Packet):
        ...

    class AccordionPacket(Packet):
        ...

    packetTypes = {
        'XY': XylophonePacket, 
        'AC': AccordionPacket,
        'PI': None   # Ignore pianos
    }

    class MusicalNetworkProtocol(Protocol):
        def dataReceived(self, data):
            try:
                packetType = packetTypes[data[:2]]
            except KeyError:
                raise BadPacketType, data[:2]
            
            if packetType:
                packet = packetType(data)
                ...

That's a contrived example off the top of my head -- but I have used code
very similar to that in the past.

There are certainly alternate ways to do these things that don't rely on
functions, methods and classes having a __nonzero__ (e.g. testing against
"is not None", or using a "lambda x: None" default argument), but there is
certainly existing code that relies upon this behaviour, so I think this
can't be changed until Python 3000.  

Even for Python 3000, I'm not sure it's a good idea.  It's currently
commonplace to simply say "if foo" to check if something isn't "empty", for
lack of a better word.  It's usually not any clearer to say 
    
    if len(myList) == 0:
        print "I have a list of stuff"

than

    if myList:
        print "I have a list of stuff"

I think the same applies to testing to see if a variable holds a callable,
just as much as it applies to checking the length of something.  Removing
this feature will lead to unnecessarily longer code for minimal benefit.

-Andrew.