With or Using

[Steve Holden]

"Jeff Epler" <jepler at inetnebr.com> wrote in message
news:slrn9emamu.cjb.jepler at potty.housenet...
> On Tue, 17 Apr 2001 09:16:11 +0100, Tim Howarth
>  <tim at worthy.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > Being lazy, I wondered if something like the following was possible in
> > Python?
> >
> > jim=person()
> >
> > Rather than typing jim each time,
> >
> > jim.born=1960
> > jim.haircolour='Brown'
> > jim.eyecolour='Green'
>
> Many people have responded about this issue.
>
> One thing I haven't seen yet is when you need to write
> a.b.c().d[4].e.f.g.h().i = 1
> a.b.c().d[4].e.f.g.h().j = 1
> a.b.c().d[4].e.f.g.h().k = 1
> that you could just as well write
> temp = a.b.c().d[4].e.f.g.h()
> temp.i = 1
> temp.j = 1
> temp.k = 1
> or (ugly!)
> for temp in a.b.c().d[4].e.f.g.h(),:
> temp.i = 1
> temp.j = 1
> temp.k = 1
> i.e., store a reference to the same thing the long expression gives you
> in an easy-to-type place.
>
Of course, augmented assignment was made for situations where you would like
to avoid writing

    a.b.c().d[4].e.f.g.h().k = a.b.c().d[4].e.f.g.h().k + 1

allowing you instead to write

    a.b.c().d[4].e.f.g.h().k += 1

I think the ugly example above is quite interesting, as it allows you to get
a lot of the benefit of a "with" type of construct (these merits are, as the
thread has proven, debatable), but does not add unnecessary sugar to the
language syntax.

regards
 STeve