too many self

[aurora]

Peter Hansen wrote:
> aurora wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 23:14:47 +0200, Diez B. Roggisch
>>
>>> class ThreadPrinter:
>>>     def __init__(self):
>>>         _.fhs = {}
>>>
>>>     def write(self, value):
>>>         f = _.fhs.get(threading.currentThread(),
> 
> ....
> 
>> Thanks this is a nice idea. I hope Python would actually support the 
>> '_'  syntax. The self really reduce readablity, especially if you have 
>> several  of them in one line.
> 
> 
> It does!  One just has to be consistent within each function.
> Diez changed the code from something like this:
> 
> def __init__(_):
>     _.fhs = {}
> 
> def write(_, value):
>     f = _.fhs.get(threading.currentThread(),
> ...
> 
> Some would argue that this is actually less readable, however,
> since it uses punctuation instead of a word.  If nothing else,
> you run into a bit of a conflict between your own technique,
> with "_", and the vast majority of the rest of the Python world,
> which uses "self" exclusively, leading to situations like this
> one...
> 
> (I think if I had a routine that really heavily used self,
> to the obvious detriment of readability, and it wasn't clear
> how else to improve it, I would use a local assignment at
> the top to make a shorter name, perhaps "s", or even "_" --
> but I wouldn't use the possibility of such a thing as a
> justification for using _ everywhere.)
> 
> -Peter

Didn't aware that _ itself is a valid identifier! True, you don't really 
want to do things differently from convention. I'm just ranting about 
the verbosity of self.

This doesn't take a complicated statement to make it really clumsy. Some 
simple statement would look like this:

   if self.max < self.list[self.index]:
      self.max = self.list[self.index]:

Replacing self with _, depends on one's aesthetic, it could be ugly or 
it could be cleaner. I like it that it is not a word and it does not 
interfere with the keywords that's really relevant.

   if _.max < _.list[_.index]:
      _.max = _.list[_.index]:

Of couse I think this syntax the best:

   if max < list[index]:
      max = list[index]:

This remind me of those awful Hungarian notation.

aurora