[Python-Dev] PEP 309: Partial method application

[Steven Bethard]

Martin v. Löwis wrote:
> So I would propose the syntax
>
>   lst.sort(key=virtual.lower) # where virtual is functional.virtual
 
Shane Hathaway wrote:
> class virtual:
>      def __getattr__(self, name):
>          return lambda obj: getattr(obj, name)()
> virtual = virtual()

I think (perhaps because of the name) that this could be confusing.  I
don't have any intuition that "virtual.lower" would return a function
that calls the "lower" attribute instead of returning a function that
simply accesses that attribute.

If we're going to move away from the itemgetter() and attrgetter()
style, then we should be consistent about it and provide a solution
(or solutions) that answers all of these problems:
    obj.attr
    obj.attr(*args, **kwargs)
    obj[key]
I'm not sure that there is a clean/obvious way to do this.

STeVe
-- 
You can wordify anything if you just verb it.
        --- Bucky Katt, Get Fuzzy