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Class Variable Access and Assignment

Antoon Pardon apardon at forel.vub.ac.be
Mon Nov 7 03:28:49 EST 2005 
Op 2005-11-04, Christopher Subich schreef <csubich.spam.block at spam.subich.block.com>:
> Antoon Pardon wrote:
>> Well I wonder. Would the following code be considered a name binding
>> operation:
>> 
>>   b.a = 5
>
> Try it, it's not.
>
> Python 2.2.3 (#1, Nov 12 2004, 13:02:04)
> [GCC 3.2.3 20030502 (Red Hat Linux 3.2.3-42)] on linux2
> Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
> >>> a
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>    File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> NameError: name 'a' is not defined
> >>> b = object()
> >>> b.a
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>    File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> AttributeError: 'object' object has no attribute 'a'
>
> Once it's attached to an object, it's an attribute, not a base name. 

So? It is still a name and it gets bound to an object. Sure the name
is bound within a specific namespace but that is IMO a detail.

> unified for Py3k, but in cases like this the distinction is important.

But part of this dicussion is about the sanity of making these kind
of distinctions. Since they apparantly plan to get rid of them in
Py3k, I guess I'm not the only one questioning that.

-- 
Antoon Pardon
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