Python Macros

[Greg Ewing]

Alex Martelli wrote:
> An _implementation_ difference, and in fact a pretty minor detail too,
> not any real _language_ difference.

I don't entirely agree with that. In Python, method calling is
not a primitive syntactic construct, it's a combination of two
others, attribute selection and calling. In Smalltalk, on the
other hand, it is a single construct, and there is no construct
for doing just the lookup part (there might be a way of doing
it, but there's no special syntax for it).

It might not be a very *important* difference, but it is a
language difference, and I think it influences how one thinks
about some problems.

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept,
University of Canterbury,	
Christchurch, New Zealand
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg