Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Mar 26)

[David Ascher]

phil hunt wrote:

> And Guido's statement supports my suggestion that pass be made
> optional in Python. Consider, when someone is designing a class,
> one could write an outline like this:
> 
> class BaseClass:
> 
> class MyClass(BaseClass):
>    def __init__(self):
>    def method1(self, a, b, c):
>    def method2(self, d, e):
>    def method3(self, f):
> 
> It is perfectly clear what this means. But unfortunately, as Python
> stands today, it is syntactically invalid, one would have to say:
> 
> class BaseClass:
>    pass
> 
> class MyClass(BaseClass):
>    def __init__(self):
>       pass
>    def method1(self, a, b, c):
>       pass
>    def method2(self, d, e):
>       pass
>    def method3(self, f):
>       pass

May I suggest that you instead do:

>>> class MyClass:
...     def do_this(self):
...             "this function would do this"
...     def do_that(self):
...             "while this function would do that"
...
>>>

and use the docstrings as a placeholder for the actions of the function
-- typically something that's foremost in your mind when you're
pseudocoding, and it counts as a statement as far as the parser's
concerned (hence is syntactically valid), and at the same time, you've
already got docstrings ready for  you when you start to implement.

--david