@decorator syntax is sugar, but for what exactly?

[Avner Ben]

Mark Bottjer wrote:

> [snip]
> I, personally, don't like the idea of overloading def in this way. To 
> me, 'def' defines something that looks and acts like a function, just 
> like 'class' defines something that looks and acts like a class, or 
> 'while' defines something which looks and acts like a loop. AProperty is 
> does not act like a function, so using def would be misleading.

Properties do not look like functions but are implemented as functions. 
there is no requirement that a variable must hide behind a property, or 
that it Must allow both read and write access.

> [Ship] 
>     property a:
>       def __init__( s, v):
>         __set__( s, v)

Why property constructor?

> Taking this to the extreme, all existing statement types (class, def, 
> print, del, etc.) could be recast as these generalized statements. We 
> could even allow subclassing of existing statements to modify their 
> behavior (for example, class_def subclassing def to make the new 
> function a class method). Strong Kung-Fu indeed. Scary, but strong.

I recall reading somewhere That the Beta language allowed subclassing 
anything

> Obviously, creating new control constructs is not something we'd want to
> do every day, as it can be a great way to obfuscate code beyond all hope
> of understanding--but the same is true of meta-classes. Just because it 
> *could* be abused doesn't mean that it would be.

IMO creating New Control constructs is a great and Much needed idea.

	Avner.