[Types-sig] Sorry!

Paul Prescod paul@prescod.net
Tue, 14 Dec 1999 07:44:30 -0800


...for spamming you guys all night. I want to make sure that everybody's
concerns get addressed. I'll slow down tonight.

One issue that Greg raised was the difficulty of checking builtin types
(in addition to the hairy parameterized types stuff). I've been thinking
about this and I think that the doc-sig and the types-sig have the same
problem. How do we sniff out the parameters and docstrings for methods
without running dangerous binary code.

I think that Java (and many other languages) has the right plan with
"shadow libraries." The CORBA guys already use IDL as a static library
syntax. I think that we should support both IDL and a strongly-typed
Pythonic syntax. It might work something like this:

def Int foo(a, b): 
	"Foo, defined in module"
	pass

def String foo(c, d, *args ): pass	
	"Foo, defined in module"
	pass

import _foo
locals().update( _foo.__dict__ )

Maybe we would have some kind of a keyword instead of the locals() hack.

-- 
 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for himself
Three things to be wary of: A new kid in his prime
A man who knows the answers, and code that runs first time
http://www.geezjan.org/humor/computers/threes.html