[Python-Dev] Missing operator.call

[Brett Cannon]

On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 05:35, Hrvoje Niksic <hrvoje.niksic at avl.com> wrote:
> Andrew Bennetts wrote:
>>
>> A patch to add operator.caller(*args, **kwargs) may be a good idea.  Your
>> example would then be:
>>
>>    map(operator.caller(), lst)
>
> Regarding the name, note that I proposed operator.call (and
> operator.__call__) because it corresponds to the __call__ special method,
> which is analogous to how operator.neg corresponds to __neg__, operator.add
> to __add__, etc.  The term "caller" implies creation of a new object that
> carries additional state, such as method name in operator.methodcaller, item
> in operator.itemgetter, or attr in operator.attrgetter.

Part of the problem is the term 'call' is an overloaded term. Do you
really mean only objects that define __call__? What about objects that
define __init__ and thus can be called as well? If you mean the former
than you have to make sure the docs are very clear about this; there
is a reason we got rid of callable(). If you mean the latter then
there is little benefit to the function since ``[x() for x in lst]``
gets you the same result as your map call.

-Brett