function without brackets ?

[Carsten Haese]

On Wed, 2007-01-03 at 15:37 +0100, Stef Mientki wrote:
> If I call a parameterless function without brackets at the end,
> the function is not performed, but ...
> I don't get an error message ???
> 
> Is this normal  behavior ?

Yes. If you "call" a function without brackets, it's not a call.

Remember that functions are first class objects that can be passed
around like any other object. Hence, Python needs the distinction
between

x = foo() # Assign the *result* of calling foo to x

and

x = foo # Assign the *function* foo itself to x.

You don't get an error message because a function name without
parentheses is a valid expression that refers to that function.

Hope this helps,

Carsten.