Explicit Frustration of the Self

[Cliff Wells]

On Tue, 2002-12-31 at 12:47, Bengt Richter wrote:
> On Tue, 31 Dec 2002 16:19:32 GMT, Andrew Koenig <ark at research.att.com> wrote:
> 
> >> What of elegance?
> >
> >> class Life:
> >> 	property = "value"
> >> def Meaning(self, argument):
> >> 		return self.property
> >
> >> This whole business with the self; it is not elegant.  And, it is of
> >> my opinion that it is, therefore, not good programming.  So I'm
> >> angry, because most of Python is so easy, so elegant, and this
> >> ain't.
> >
> >How would you like to be able to write it instead?  Show us some
> >examples.  Whatever you come up with, I'll bet it will be possible
> >to find even greater problems.
> >
> Someone proposed just a bare leading dot or invisible self name.
> 
>   class Foo:
>       bar = 123 
>       def baz(,arg):
>           .arg = arg
>           return .bar+arg
> 
> It's less typing anyway. That's a plus for me.

I (sheepishly) admit that I'm kind of fond of the "with" statement some
languages have:

somelongname.x = 1

with somelongname:
    .x += 1
    print .x 

It's a bit more explicit and more versatile as well (can be used for
more than just self).  I'm certain a PEP has been written and rejected
on this (or maybe enough arguing was done on c.l.py that a PEP was never
bothered with), so I'll just be jealous of VB programmers for this one
little thing.  


-- 
Cliff Wells, Software Engineer
Logiplex Corporation (www.logiplex.net)
(503) 978-6726 x308  (800) 735-0555 x308