Rule of order for dot operators?

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, May 18, 2015 at 3:50 AM, C.D. Reimer <chris at cdreimer.com> wrote:
> On 5/16/2015 6:45 PM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, 17 May 2015 05:40 am, Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn wrote:
>>
>>> C.D. Reimer wrote:
>>> ^^^^
>>> Who?
>>
>> Don't be a dick, Thomas. Lots of people use their initials. You use your
>> nickname as part of your sender address, why are you questioning somebody
>> for using their initials?
>
>
> I used my initials to hide my online presence from the Real World(tm). If a
> hiring manager looks up my legal name on the Internet, he or she will find a
> bunch of Usenet postings when I was a SuSE Linux noob in the 1990's. The
> only online accounts I have under my legal name is a Yahoo email address and
> a LinkedIn profile. After working at one employer that allowed anything
> found on the Internet as ammo in the office politics, a blank online slate
> provides better protection from such nonsense.

Personally, I'd rather establish a strong presence under my actual
name than try to hide; otherwise, there'll still _be_ some sort of
presence, but it's less under your control. But that's a matter of
opinion.

> Besides, I got called by my initials in school when the compact discs (CD)
> became popular. :)

Could be worse. You could have been called Carrier Detect, Current
Directory (or Change Directory), candela (if written "cd"), Cadmium
(if written "Cd"), or any number of other things. I've heard tell you
can learn a lot about someone by what they first think of as an
expansion of "CD". :)

> As for my question, my 2007 Core Python Programming book (based on python
> 2.5) indexed the dot for search operations. Some code examples show a single
> call (i.e., object.method()) but not multiple calls (i.e.,
> object.method().method()). Since I wasn't sure what I was looking for, an
> Internet search turned up nothing useful. Hence, IMHO, a noobie question.
>
> Maybe I need a newer python book?

Based on 2.5? Probably; get yourself a book that focuses on 3.x,
ideally. But not because stuff is fundamentally different - more
because you'll be missing out on some improvements. From 2.5 to 2.7
there were a number of neat feature additions, many of them enabling
2.x/3.x compatibility, plus some tidyups and such; what you'd normally
expect of a couple of versions' worth of development. Most of what the
book says is probably still valid.

ChrisA