Catching all methods before they execute

[Michael Hoffman]

jamesthiele.usenet at gmail.com wrote:

> l = Undoable(list)
> l = [1, 2, 3]

You just rebound l, so it no longer refers to an Undoable, it
refers to a list. This design won't work, you need something
more like:

l = Undoable([1, 2, 3])

There were a few other pitfalls in your design... Here,
try something like this instead:

class SurrogateNotInitedError(exceptions.AttributeError):
     pass

class Surrogate(object):
     """
     the data is stored in _data

     >>> list1 = [0, 1, 2, 3]
     >>> list2 = [4, 5, 6, 7]
     >>> surrogate = Surrogate(list1)
     >>> surrogate.reverse()
     >>> list1
     [3, 2, 1, 0]
     >>> surrogate._data = list2
     >>> surrogate.append(8)
     >>> list2
     [4, 5, 6, 7, 8]
     """
     def __init__(self, data):
         self._data = data

     def __getattr__(self, name):
         if name == "_data":
             raise SurrogateNotInitedError, name
         else:
             try:
                 return getattr(self._data, name)
             except SurrogateNotInitedError:
                 raise SurrogateNotInitedError, name

You can modify this to make an UndoableSurrogate with appropriate saving
of state. Note the use of __getattr__ instead of __getattribute__. The
latter is not needed since there are not any attributes defined on
Surrogate instead.
-- 
Michael Hoffman