[Tutor] what does the "@" operator mean?

[Steve Willoughby]

Marc Tompkins wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 5:03 PM, Alan Gauld <alan.gauld at btinternet.com> wrote:
>> I've been using Python for oover 10 years and still find decorators
>> hard to get my head around! :-)
> I've only been using Python for a couple of years now, but my
> experience so far is the same as yours: decorators make my head hurt.

Interesting.  I actually rather like them and find them to be a tool to 
clean up code quite a bit.  Python's ability to have classes offer 
"attributes" which are really handled by wrapper functions is a similar 
animal (in the sense that they can be very nice but also could be 
horribly abused to make smelly code).

That said, I don't find myself using them too often.  Sort of like a 
special seasoning you add to the occasional dish but exotic enough to 
taste weird if you used it all the time.

For example, creating web apps in TurboGears uses decorators to expose 
methods, apply error handling and output templates without unnecessarily 
cluttering all your method definitions.