Python syntax in Lisp and Scheme

[Alex Martelli]

Bengt Richter wrote:
   ...
> I like the Bunch class, but the name suggests vegetables to me ;-)

Well, I _like_ vegetables...

> BTW, care to comment on a couple of close variants of Bunch with
> per-object class dicts? ...
> 
>     def mkNSC(**kwds): return type('NSC', (), kwds)()

Very nice (apart from the yecchy name;-).

> or, stretching the one line a bit to use the instance dict,
> 
>     def mkNSO(**kwds): o=type('NSO', (), {})(); o.__dict__.update(kwds);
>     return o

I don't see the advantage of explicity using an empty dict and then
updating it with kwds, vs using kwds directly.

> I'm wondering how much space is actually wasted with a throwaway class. Is
> there a lazy copy-on-write kind of optimization for class and instance
> dicts that prevents useless proliferation? I.e.,

I strongly doubt there's any "lazy copy-on-write" anywhere in Python.
The "throwaway class" will be its dict (which, here, you need -- that's
the NS you're wrapping, after all) plus a little bit (several dozen bytes
for the typeobject, I'd imagine); an instance of Bunch, probably a bit
smaller.  But if you're going to throw either away soon, who cares?


>>but I think the "purer" (more extreme) versions are
>>interesting "tipizations" for the languages, anyway.
>>
> Oh goody, a new word (for me ;-). Would you define "tipization"?

I thought I was making up a word, and slipped by spelling it
as in Italiano "tipo" rather than English "type".  It appears
(from Google) that "typization" IS an existing word (sometimes
mis-spelled as "tipization"), roughly in the meaning I intended
("characterization of types") -- though such a high proportion
of the research papers, institutes, etc, using "typization",
seems to come from Slavic or Baltic countries, that I _am_
left wondering...;-).


Alex