[Python-Dev] PEP 8 updates/clarifications

[Jim Fulton]

Barry Warsaw wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-12-11 at 16:30 -0600, Ian Bicking wrote:
> 
> 
>>Potentially it could be added that the whole issue can often be avoided 
>>when an object's methods perform actions instead of returning attributes 
>>of the object.  It's a long topic; maybe it could even just be a link, 
>>if someone knows of a good discussion along those lines.  I'm sure 
>>there's some terminology here that I'm forgetting that describes the 
>>design pattern.  There's also a point when the style guide becomes an 
>>API design guide, and I don't know how far it should go in that direction.
> 
> 
> I'm not exactly sure if this is what you're getting at, but one thing
> that bothers me is using data attributes to trigger actions.  Maybe this
> gets into the "no side-effects" rule for data attributes, but attributes
> that cause an object to perform some action should always be explicit
> methods.

Exactly.  That's why I suggested the PEP start with the trivial case,
which, BTW is extremely common.  Let judgement guide when something
is no-longer trivial.

Jim

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