Wrapping classes

[Diez B. Roggisch]

Jeremy Sanders wrote:
> Peter Hansen wrote:
>  
> 
>>Almost anything is possible in Python, though whether the underlying
>>design idea is sound is a completely different question.  (Translation:
>>try the following pseudo-code, but I have my suspicions about whether
>>what you're doing is a good idea. :-) )
> 
> 
> What I'd like to do precisely is to be able to evaluate an expression like
> "a+2*b" (using eval) where a and b are objects which behave like numarray
> arrays, but whose values aren't computed until their used.

Maybe you can do that by passing eval your own globals dictionary - 
which in its __getitem__ method will then compute the value  lazy.

The heck, we're in python. Lets try:

class Foo(object):

     def __init__(self):
	self.a = 10
	self.b = 20
	#return dict.__new__(self)

     def __getitem__(self, key):
	print "computing %s" % key
	return getattr(self, key)

l = Foo()
print l.a

print eval("10 * a + b", globals(), l)


It works - in python 2.4!! I tried subclassing dict, but my 
__getitem__-method wasn't called - most probably because it's a C-type, 
but I don't know for sure. Maybe someone can elaborate on that?

Regards,

Diez