looking for a pattern

[Geoff Gerrietts]

Quoting Carlos Ribeiro (cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br):
> You can use the list to hold all objects, or simply use the list to keep a few 
> auxiliary links, but you got the idea. Of course, you are going to be careful 
> and do the link management yourself, but this technique allows you to avoid 
> explicit circular references.

This is sorta the pattern I was looking for, I think.

I can see an alternate implementation along the lines of keeping all
the objects in a collection / dictionary by id(obj), and managing the
parent links on the individual objects. Might look like:

Collection = {}

class FamilyMember:
  def __init__(self, parent_id):
    Collection[id(self)] = self
    self._parent_id = parent_id

  def parent(self):
    return Collection.get(self._parent_id)

I think that might be the near-equivalent of a weakref, in 1.5.2?
Except the Collection needs to be explicitly managed.

--G.

-- 
Geoff Gerrietts             "People talk fundamentals and superlatives 
<geoff at gerrietts net>     and then make some changes of detail." 
http://www.gerrietts.net                  --Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr