Symbols as parameters?

[Roald de Vries]

On Jan 22, 2010, at 1:06 PM, Martin Drautzburg wrote:

> On 22 Jan., 11:56, Roald de Vries <r... at roalddevries.nl> wrote:
>> Hi Martin,
>>
>> On Jan 21, 2010, at 8:43 AM, Martin Drautzburg wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Hello all,
>>
>>> When passing parameters to a function, you sometimes need a paramter
>>> which can only assume certain values, e.g.
>>
>>>        def move (direction):
>>>                ...
>>> If direction can only be "up", "down", "left" or "right", you can
>>> solve
>>> this by passing strings, but this is not quite to the point:
>>
>>>        - you could pass invalid strings easily
>>>        - you need to quote thigs, which is a nuisance
>>>        - the parameter IS REALLY NOT A STRING, but a direction
>>
>>> Alternatively you could export such symbols, so when you "import *"
>>> you
>>> have them available in the caller's namespace. But that forces you
>>> to "import *" which pollutes your namespace.
>>
>>> What I am really looking for is a way
>>
>>>        - to be able to call move(up)
>>>        - having the "up" symbol only in the context of the function
>>> call
>>
>>> So it should look something like this
>>
>>> ... magic, magic ...
>>> move(up)
>>> ... unmagic, unmagic ...
>>> print up
>>
>>> This should complain that "up" is not defined during the "print"  
>>> call,
>>> but not when move() is called. And of course there should be as  
>>> little
>>> magic as possible.
>>
>>> Any way to achieve this?
>>
>> You could do something like this:
>>
>> class Move(object):
>>      def __call__(self, direction):
>>          print(direction)
>>          return 0
>>
>>      def up(self):
>>          return self('up')
>>
>> move = Move()
>>
>> Now move.up() means move('up'), and you can obviously do similar
>> things for other directions.- Zitierten Text ausblenden -
>>
>> - Zitierten Text anzeigen -
>
> I had thought about that too. It gets a bit tricky when there is more
> than one parameter and it completely fails whan a parameter can REALLY
> be a number or an arbitrary string. Think: move(direction, distance)

For extra parameters:

class Move(object):
      def __call__(self, direction, param1, param2, *params, **dict):
          print(direction)
          return 0

      def up(self, *params, **dict):
          return self('up', *params, **dict)

move = Move()

On Jan 22, 2010, at 1:06 PM, Martin Drautzburg wrote:

> On 22 Jan., 11:56, Roald de Vries <r... at roalddevries.nl> wrote:
>> Hi Martin,
>>
>> On Jan 21, 2010, at 8:43 AM, Martin Drautzburg wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Hello all,
>>
>>> When passing parameters to a function, you sometimes need a paramter
>>> which can only assume certain values, e.g.
>>
>>>        def move (direction):
>>>                ...
>>> If direction can only be "up", "down", "left" or "right", you can
>>> solve
>>> this by passing strings, but this is not quite to the point:
>>
>>>        - you could pass invalid strings easily
>>>        - you need to quote thigs, which is a nuisance
>>>        - the parameter IS REALLY NOT A STRING, but a direction
>>
>>> Alternatively you could export such symbols, so when you "import *"
>>> you
>>> have them available in the caller's namespace. But that forces you
>>> to "import *" which pollutes your namespace.
>>
>>> What I am really looking for is a way
>>
>>>        - to be able to call move(up)
>>>        - having the "up" symbol only in the context of the function
>>> call
>>
>>> So it should look something like this
>>
>>> ... magic, magic ...
>>> move(up)
>>> ... unmagic, unmagic ...
>>> print up
>>
>>> This should complain that "up" is not defined during the "print"  
>>> call,
>>> but not when move() is called. And of course there should be as  
>>> little
>>> magic as possible.
>>
>>> Any way to achieve this?
>>
>> You could do something like this:
>>
>> class Move(object):
>>      def __call__(self, direction):
>>          print(direction)
>>          return 0
>>
>>      def up(self):
>>          return self('up')
>>
>> move = Move()
>>
>> Now move.up() means move('up'), and you can obviously do similar
>> things for other directions.- Zitierten Text ausblenden -
>>
>> - Zitierten Text anzeigen -
>
> I had thought about that too. It gets a bit tricky when there is more
> than one parameter

For extra parameters:

class Move(object):
      def __call__(self, direction, param1, param2, *params, **dict):
          print(direction)
          return 0

      def up(self, *params, **dict):
          return self('up', *params, **dict)

move = Move()

> and it completely fails whan a parameter can REALLY
> be a number or an arbitrary string. Think: move(direction, distance)

For a number, move.up(10) wouldn't be too bad. For an arbitrary  
string, you always have __getattr__ and __getattribute__. But if you  
like this style of coding, you should probably switch to Ruby.