[Types-sig] Re: Meta-classes discussion starter

[Just van Rossum]

At 10:36 AM -0500 12/1/98, Donald Beaudry wrote:
>It's interesting to note that a patch is not necessary.  All you need is
>an extension module that exports a hand written meta-class.  This
>meta-class can then poke into the class that's being defined and check
>for the existence of the __class__ attribute.

But then you don't have the advantage which was the main reason to make
that patch, which is that you don't have to spell it like:

class A(some_extension_object):
    __class__ = whatever

but that the following "just works":

class A:
    __class__ = mymetahook

Or do I miss something here?

On a related note, would my hook break your stuff? The test to see whether
the method dict contains a __class__ entry happens *before* the tests that
check whether one of the base classes either has a callable type or has a
__class__ attr. If it does (break your stuff), maybe I should reverse the
tests, although that would make the hook less elegant.

Just