Are decorators really that different from metaclasses...

[Colin J. Williams]

Paul Morrow wrote:
[snip]

> 
> 
> Yes, it doesn't seem all that complex, although I'm not sure that 
> everyone reading this understands them and their subtleties.  The 
> following is an excerpt from 
> http://docs.python.org/tut/node11.html#SECTION0011200000000000000000
> 
> "A namespace is a mapping from names to objects. Most namespaces are 
> currently implemented as Python dictionaries, but that's normally not 
> noticeable in any way (except for performance), and it may change in the 
> future. Examples of namespaces are: the set of built-in names (functions 
> such as abs(), and built-in exception names); the global names in a 
> module; and the local names in a function invocation. In a sense the set 
> of attributes of an object also form a namespace."
> 
> When I talk about namespaces, I include all of the above, including the 
> sense mentioned in the last line.  So an object's attributes constitute 
> a namespace too.  Therefore __doc__, being an attribute of the function 
> object, is in the function object's /namespace/.  And note that this is 
> *not* a new namespace; it's been there all along.
> 
Could you elaborate on the last sentence please?  Is the namespace not 
created when the def ... line(s) is/are executed?

Colin W.