Super Tuples

[Paul Prescod]

Skip Montanaro wrote:
> 
> ...
> 
> Hmm.  Attributes, but no methods?  Why doesn't the current class notion
> solve the problem?  

Class instances are not tuples. If you use tuples in your code then you
know that they have virtues that instances do not.

> In fact, I'm not sure what the problem you're trying to
> solve is.

Unreadable tuple-based code like this:

j = mytuple[11]

Of course the usual way to work around this is to do this:

j = mytuple[someconstantpool.someconstant]

But now you have to memorize the location of the constant pool (if
available!) and your execution is slowed by all of the lookups.

> What's the result of
> 
>     time = (hour=24, minute=00, second=00)
>     point = (x=1, y=2, z=3)
> 
>     time = point

"time" is an alias for "point"! Python doesn't do type checking of
assignments. It doesn't matter whether time and point are tuples,
super-tuples, classes or integers.

 Paul Prescod