Accessors in Python (getters and setters)

[Gerhard Fiedler]

On 2006-07-12 06:17:27, mystilleef wrote:

> But developers tend to pay more attention to given methods/functions
> less crappy names, at least when compared to data attributes. This
> stems from the fact that in many languages data attributes aren't
> usually part of the API, as well as the whole OO(Encapsulation) blah
> blah. 

I'm not sure about which languages you are talking (pretty much all that
allow public methods also allow public attributes), but in general I think
you should get away from the distinction attribute vs method (which doesn't
make much sense in any language) and start looking at the distinction
public vs private (which is what you really are talking about) -- and start
giving the appropriate care to naming public entities, no matter /what/
they are. (Besides, I don't know many coding rules that say that creating
an accessor get/setTemporaryBuffer that acts on the private member tmp is
good style.)

I'm just starting to get started with Python, but it seems that the leading
underscore marks private entities. So why don't you precede everything with
an underscore that doesn't have a name that fulfills your criteria for a
decent public name -- no matter what kind of entity it is?

It seems you are basically complaining that you used a crappy name in a
public API. Well... you shouldn't, not in Python, and not in any other
language :)  And there's no way around it, not in Python, and not in any
other language, than to rename that entity in the public API. Which can be
a major hassle, close to impossible. There are all kinds of public APIs
with crappy names (using accessors and all :) that got created early on and
never changed. Stuff happens.

Maybe you didn't know about the underscore way to mark private entities.
Maybe this doesn't work as I think it does (from reading this thread). But
maybe it does, and maybe that's then just part of the learning curve for
you. (And I'm sure you're not alone... :)

Gerhard