[Python-Dev] PEP: __source__ proposal

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Stelios Xanthakis wrote:
> The key point is that I think think should be the
> job of the parser and the functionality provided
> at the interactive prompt w/o the user having to
> write 'dyndef' or store the code of exec's or request
> from himself to use specific commands to create
> functions. It should be transparent built into python.

For the case of the interactive prompt, if preserving
the source code is somehow desirable (which I doubt),
it should be the job of the development environment
to offer saving interactively-defined methods.

Such IDE support is necessary even if __source__ was
available, since users probably would not want to write

open("demo.py").write(myfunc.__source__ + "\n" + myclass.__source)

> OTOH, programming python is easy and fun and I think
> the proposed feature will make it even more fun and it
> aims in increasing the number of people who program
> python for their every day tasks. It'd be interesting to
> hear if the developers of IDLE/ipython/etc could use this.

I think it is the other way 'round. If this is *only* for
interactive mode, than you should *first* change the interactive
environments. If you then find you absolutely need this feature
to implement the IDEs correctly, I'd like to hear the (new)
rationale for the change.

Regards,
Martin