Are routine objects guaranteed mutable & with dictionary?
Terry Reedy
tjreedy at udel.edu
Fri Dec 4 16:23:44 EST 2009
Alf P. Steinbach wrote:
> The question is what guarantees or absence thereof the language
> specification, PEPs, intentions, whatever gives/has.
The two docs backed up by PEPs. I suppose the docs could be clearer.
5.3.1 says "The primary must evaluate to an object of a type that
supports attribute references, which most objects do." This is true for
attribute access, but not for attribute setting. See
http://bugs.python.org/issue7436
for my suggest addition.
>> BTW, it's a function, not a "routine"
>
> Wikipedia is your friend, <url: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subroutine>.
which says "the C and C++ programming languages, subprograms are
referred to as "functions" (or "methods" when associated with a class)."
The same is true for Python and many other languages. Some languages
have separate statements for defining functions and (non-function)
subroutines. If you want to be understood, use function. I thought you
mean 'routine' as opposed to 'special'.
Terry Jan Reedy
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