PEP318: radical notion

[Arien Malec]

Michael Sparks <michaels at rd.bbc.co.uk> wrote in
news:cgi4vh$4q7$1 at nntp0.reith.bbc.co.uk: 

> Arien Malec wrote:
> ...
>> Is there a valid use case that supports arbitrary magical
>> non-metadata transformations of standalone functions?
> 
> 2 use cases (in addition to others people have mentioned) I can think
> of off the top of my head:
>    * Adding call tracing to specific functions without disturbing the
>      code.
>    * Wrapping generator functions so that they can recieve data in an
>      IPC manner.

PEP318 = AOP by another name?

I can think of a couple of workaround for the issue you raise:

1) Allow a "module metaclass" -- something that can intercept function
defs at a module level, read metadata, and apply necessary
transformations 

2) Have a default class that standalone functions are static members of,
which can have a default metaclass associated with it. 

I personally think that separating metadata from transformations is a
much cleaner approach than using the transformation implementation for
everything. 

Arien