>>>>> "GMcM" == Gordon McMillan <gmcm@hypernet.com> writes:
[please imagine that the c is raised]
BAW> Think about my proposal this way: it actually removes a
BAW> restriction.
[Jeremy Hylton wrote:]
>> I think this is really the crux of the matter! The proposal
>> removes a useful restriction.
>>
>> The alternatives /F suggested seem clearer to me that sticking
>> new attributes on functions and methods. Three things I like
>> about the approach: It affords an opportunity to be very clear
>> about how the attributes are intended to be used. I suspect it
>> would be easier to describe with a static type system.
GMcM> Having to be explicit about the method <-> regex / rule would
GMcM> severely damage SPARK's elegance. It would make Tim's doctest
GMcM> useless.
Do either of these examples modify the __doc__ attribute? I am happy
to think of both of them as elegant abuses of the doc string. (Not
sure what semantics I mean for "elegant abuse" but not pejorative.)
I'm not arguing that we should change the language to prevent them
from using doc strings.
Fred and I were just talking, and he observed that a variant of Python
that included a syntactic mechanism to specify more than one attribute
(effectively, a multiple doc string syntax) might be less
objectionable than setting arbitrary attributes at runtime. Neither
of us could imagine just what that syntax would be.
>> It prevents confusion and errors that might result from
>> unprincipled use of function attributes.
GMcM> While I'm sure I will be properly shocked and horrified when
GMcM> you come up with an example, in my naivety, I can't imagine
GMcM> what it will look like ;-).
It would look really, really bad ;-). I couldn't think of a good
example, so I guess this is a FUD argument. A rough sketch, though,
would be a program that assigned attribute X to all functions that
were to be used in a certain way. If the assignment is a runtime
operation, rather than a syntactic construct that defines a static
attribute, it would be possible to accidentally assign attribute X to
a function that was not intended to be used that way. This connection
between a group of functions and a particular behavior would depend
entirely on some runtime magic with settable attributes.
Jeremy
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