Printable string for 'self'

[Michael Tobis]

> What were you planning to do with this object exactly that didn't involve binding it to any other names during its lifetime?

Nothing so silly as that.

The idea is not to prevent other references from binding to the object,
but to allow the object to ensure that a certain symbol always points
to it.

I no longer suspect that this is a good enough idea to redesign the
language, but it seems to come up regularly.

I will elaborate on my use case later, as I am still looking for a
satisfactory workaround. I think that someone working on a logo-like
platform wanted to be able to assign permanent names to his turtles,
which is an easier case to understand.

In both cases there is the idea to construct a platform for programmers
of intermediate skill, to expose the python environment as well as
powerful objects that they don't need to modify, but need to be able to
access by name. It would be good to be able to guarantee that the name
would be a valid reference to the object in question.

mt