[Python-Dev] PEP 292: method names

[Raymond Hettinger]

[Barry]
> > What can't you do with PEP 292 as it now stands?

[Erik] 
> Examples from previous posts: sh-style safe variables, ml entities.
As
> you really can't reuse anything now, it would be like starting from
> scratch.

It took a good while to refine the existing implementation to handle all
the nuances of the $var format.  My suspicion is that a format with
opening and closing delimiters would have its own share of issues
(nesting and escaping for example) and would warrant its own separate
solution.

The current implementation is pretty darned good and strikes a nice
balance between extensibility goals and simplification goals (using $var
instead of a %(var)s format).  The API is clean and friendly for most
purposes.

Barry has made it possible to create unicode coercing subclasses, to
substitute alternate identifier patterns (such as dotted names), to
specify an alternative delimiter, and to use polymorphism for changing
the implementation without changing client code.  That is quite a bit of
extensibility.  Further hypergeneralization would stray too far from the
original simplification goals.

After experimenting with alternative approaches and writing subclasses,
I learned that no design easily accommodated the most complex use cases.
The pattern, convert function, flags, and invocation are so tightly
coupled that you really are better off coding from scratch.
Fortunately, with the string.py source available as a model, it is not
hard to do.

So, for applications beyond the limits of the current design, my
suggestion is to use regexes to roll your own.  At some point, it is
easier to write a regex than to write a subclass overriding all existing
behaviors.



Raymond