PEP 318

[Skip Montanaro]

    >> If easing the creation of class methods is so important, I would prefer 

    AdSR> Just done a quick check:

    AdSR> $ find /lib/python2.3/ -name "*.py" -exec egrep
    AdSR> "(class|static)method\W" {} ';' | wc --lines
    AdSR>      49

    AdSR> Not all of them are calls, and all this in 773 *.py files. I guess
    AdSR> this says something about importance...

Not necessarily.  Certainly there's the fact that class and static methods
will be less frequently used than normal methods.  However, there are also
another mitigating factors as I see it, neither classmethod() nor
staticmethod() have been around all that long (2.2 timeframe).

I will reiterate my comment from before:  PEP 318 is about more than just
static and class methods.  Here are a few examples from the python-dev
discussion.

  1.  From Fred Drake:

    As an (admittedly trivial) example, I'd be quite happy for:

        class Color [valuemap]:
            red = rgb(255, 0, 0)
            blue  = rgb(0, 255, 0)
            green = rgb(0, 0, 255)

    to cause the name Color to be bound to a non-callable object.  Why must
    the decorators be required to return callables?  It will not make sense
    in all circumstances when a decorator is being used.

  2.  From Anders Munch:

    Given that the decorator expression can be an arbitrary Python
    expression, it _will_ be used as such. For example:

    def foo(arg1, arg2) as release(
            version="1.0",
            author="me",
            status="Well I wrote it so it works, m'kay?",
            warning="You might want to use the Foo class instead"):

  3.  From Shane Hathaway:

    Ooh, what about this:

         def singleton(klass):
             return klass()

         class MyThing [singleton]:
             ...

    That would be splendid IMHO.

There are plenty of other examples.  Browse the archives.

think-outside-the-bun-(tm)-ly, y'rs,

Skip