[Python-3000] PEP Parade

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 12:14 PM 5/1/2007 -0700, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>Suppose you couldn't assign to __class__ of a function (that's too
>messy to deal with in CPython) and you couldn't assign to its __code__
>either. What proposed functionality would you lose?

The ability to overload any function, without having to track down all the 
places it's already been imported or otherwise saved, and change them to 
point to a new function or a non-function object.


>How would you
>ideally implement that functionality if you had the ability to modify
>CPython in other ways? (I'm guessing you'd want to add some
>functionality to function objects; what would that functionality have
>to do?)

Hm...  well, in PyPy they have a "become" feature (I don't know if it's a 
mainline feature or not) that allows you to say, "replace object A with 
object B, wherever A is currently referenced".  Then the replacement object 
(GF implementation) needn't even be a function.

A narrower feature, however, more specific to functions, would just be 
*some* way to redirect or guard the function's actual execution.  For 
example, if function objects had a writable __call__ attribute, that would 
be invoked in place of the normal behavior.  (Assuming there was a way to 
save the old __call__ or make a copy of the function before it was modified.)

I really just need a way to make calling the function do something 
different from what it normally would -- and ideally this should be in such 
a way that I could still invoke the function's original behavior.  (So it 
can be used as the default method when nothing else matches, or the 
least-specific fallback method.)