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python improvements (Was: Re: New Language)

Martijn Faassen m.faassen at vet.uu.nl
Tue May 16 06:28:07 EDT 2000 
Bernhard Herzog <herzog at online.de> wrote:
> m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen) writes:

>> Russell E. Owen <owen at astronojnk.washington.edu.invalid> wrote:
>> [snip]
>> > - class methods (e.g. ClassName.doSomething(...)). Often useful where 
>> > global functions might otherwise be wanted. By requiring the class name 
>> > one gets namespace protection and categorizes the function as relevant 
>> > to objects of the given class.
>> 
>> Hm, how would this provide you with more namespace protection than the
>> current module system? By being in the same module, a function also
>> gets categorized as relevant to objects of the classes defined in the
>> module, too..

> I used to think this too, but recently I actually had a situation where
> class methods would have been useful. I had a list of classes, so the
> classes were effectively anonymous and I didn't know where each class
> came from, yet I wanted to get some class specific information that I
> wanted to compute at that time and not at class creation time (when the
> class statement is executed). 

Right, that's a good point.

> I couldn't just instantiate the classes to get at real methods because
> the constructors required some arguments I couldn't supply at that time
> and while it's possible to get at the module the class was defined in[1]
> but I didn't want to rely on that.

You could give each class a list of associated module level functions,
I suppose, though?

> In that situation, real class methods would have been useful and cleaner
> than any other solution. In the end, I fell back to normal class
> attributes that are computed at class definition time because it works
> well enough for the time being.

Right, I'd agree class methods would be a cleaner solution here. I don't
think that other potential solutions are that much worse, though. But
you're right, this is an example of when they'd be convenient.

Regards,

Martijn
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