[XML-SIG] foo.bar vs. foo.get_bar()

[Greg Stein]

On Fri, 5 Nov 1999 uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com wrote:
>...
> The real mess comes about if MyNode's programmer wants to use __[g/s]etattr__ 
> for whatever reason.

Presuming your DOM uses those already.

> So the list of knocks against "node.parent" is now:
> 
> *	Probably slower
> *	Complex behavior masked in a supposedly simple attribute access
> *	Possible confusion and complexity in sub-classing situations

IFF __getattr__ is used. If the attribute actually exists, then this is
the fastest approach possible. This is why qp_xml is so quick -- it has
all the attributes already assigned and clients just grab the values.

> So far, its main plusses are that it's clean, pythonic, and in close 
> correspondence to the W3C API specifications.

Definitely.

> Note that I don't like the idea of the Python binding officially supporting 
> two approaches, i.e. "node.parent" _and_ "node.get_parent()".  I think it's 
> great for implementations to provide alternatives, but the binding should 
> require one unequivocally.

I'm in "violent agreement" here :-)

Cheers,
-g

--
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/