Two minor syntactic proposals

[phil hunt]

On Mon, 18 Jun 2001 00:18:07 +0100, Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com> wrote:
>>    qclass Thing:
>>       insvar v, w
>>       def myMethod(p):
>>          print p, v, x
>>       def otherMethod():
>>          myMethod(1)
>>          someFunction()
>> 
>> would be equivalent to:
>> 
>>    class Thing:
>>       def myMethod(self, p):
>>          print p, self.v, x
>>       def otherMethod(self):
>>          self.myMethod(1)
>>          someFunction()
>
>I confess that my initial reaction is "eeurgh", which may well
>be how others react to my proposals.

Quite possibly.

Bear in mind that about half of all syntax errors I have with Python
as missing out "self"s.

> I think your qclass/insvar
>proposal breaks the following principles of Pythonic style:
>
>  - "Explicit is better than implicit" (one of the timbots
>    rules from way back). "self" really *is* a function argument,
>    and eliminating all mention of it feels uncomfortable.
>    Not to mention that "qclass" binds "self" without saying
>    so. Is there anything else in Python that binds things
>    that it doesn't mention? I can't think of any right now.
>
>  - "No cryptic identifier names". Why "qclass"? Why not
>    "xclass" or "zclass"? (Does the "q" actually stand for
>    something?)

"Quick" actually.

>     How easy will it be to remember that it's
>    "insvar", not "instvar" or "insvars"?

good question. Perhaps "instance" or "var" would be better.

>> Note that a qclass definition would have to know what its methods and instance
>> variables were, including those inherited from superclasses, for this to work.
>> Is this feasible?
>
>I don't understand what you mean by "know what its instance variables
>are"; new instance variables can materialize on the fly on a per-class
>or per-instance basis. 

I know that. I mean the defined ones.

>Anyway, why would it need to know that?

I was thinking in terms of a preprocessor that changes my language
(q-Python or whatever you want to call it, into python)

Say it has a line: 
   print x (in q-python)

It needs to know whether this means, in Python:

   (1) print self.x

or

   (2) print x

It all depends on whether x is a defined instance variable.

-- 
##  Philip Hunt                   ##
##  philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  ##