[Csv] CSV interface question

[Dave Cole]

>>>>> "Andrew" == Andrew McNamara <andrewm at object-craft.com.au> writes:

Andrew> csv.reader(fileobj, csv.dialect.excel)
>>
Andrew> Thoughts?
>>
Dave> Is there a downside to this?  I can't see one immediately.
>>  With the dialect concept all we are talking about is a collection
>> of parameter settings.  Encapsulating that as subclasses seems like
>> it hides the data-oriented nature behind the facade of source code.

Andrew> It has the virtue that sub-classing can be used to represent
Andrew> related variants. So, excel-tab might be:

Andrew>         class excel-tab(excel):
Andrew>             delimiter = '\t'

Not sure the python interpreter will like that class name :-)

Andrew> This could also be useful for users of the module:

Andrew>         class funky(excel):
Andrew>             quotes = "'"

Andrew> Essentially we'd be using classes as glorified dictionaries
Andrew> with cascading values.

I would prefer attribute only flat objects.  The alternative would
have us traversing inheritance trees to extract class dictionaries.

class dialect:
    def __init__(self, delimiter=',', ...):
        self.delimiter = delimiter
        :

>>> funky = csv.copy_dialect('excel')
>>> funky.quotes = "'"

Not as nice as subclassing, but probably good enough.

- Dave

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