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Is it just Syntactic Sugar ?

Thomas Wouters thomas at xs4all.net
Tue May 30 15:39:57 EDT 2000 
On Tue, May 30, 2000 at 05:18:56PM +0000, Thomas Palmer wrote:
> Bjorn Pettersen wrote:

> > [Guido] has considered a += method.  It would require adding more
> > 'magic' methods however, so there is still some resistance...

> Not really. As syntactic sugar, it is just a rewrite.

> i += 1 (or i++ for that matter) would be rewriten to
> i = i + 1. Whether memory addresses were cached for
> optimization is another issue, but the point is that
> only '__add__' needs overwritten still. The compiler
> would just rewrite the code.

Well, if it is only a rewrite, it is *completely* useless. Since when does
Python care about syntactic sugar ? I personally am beginning to detest the
`object` sugar to represent repr(object), because it seems so very
unpythonic (I'd be much obliged if anyone could give me a reason for ``,
other than the usual hysterical raisin ;-) Adding ++/+= et al as rewrites
would be horrifying.

No, I have more faith in the idea that += is an *in place* add, for mutable
types. It does require more __magic__(), but in my (maybe not too humble at
this moment) opinion, it's bloody well worth it. I dont know what the
__magic__ names would be, as __addeq__ seems out of place (we're talking
about assignment, or mutation, not equality) but i'm sure someone can think
of a couple of good names ;-P

__addass__'ly yr's,

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

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