__call__ considered harmful or indispensable?

[Carl Banks]

On Aug 2, 4:27 pm, Paul Rubin <http://phr...@NOSPAM.invalid> wrote:
> s... at pobox.com writes:
> > In this particular case it was clearly unnecessary and just obfuscated the
> > code.  I'm wondering, are there some general cases where __call__ methods of
> > a user-defined class are simply indispensable?
>
> I don't know about "indispensable" but __call__ is convenient sometimes
> and I do use it.  I've wished that modules supported call, so I could
> say
>
>     import foo
>     x = foo(3)
>
> instead of having to say x=foo.foo(3) or something like that.

I used to think that.  Or, rather, I often thought that it'd be nice
if a function or class could be imported like a module.

These days I think it'd be enough if modules don't have the same name
as any (public) objects they define.  No more glob.glob,
select.select, or time.time.  It's ugly and potentially confusing.
And if I were Polynesian I would keep thinking I was seeing plurals.


Carl Banks