[Python-Dev] Self in method body

[Filip Gruszczyński]

There is a large discussion on python-list about Guido's article about
new self syntax, therefore I would like to use that to raise similar
question: self in the body. Some time ago I was coding in Magik
language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magik_(programming_language),
which is dynamically typed and similar to Smalltalk and actually to
Python too - although the syntax is far less appalling. As you can see
in the examples, defining methods is very similar to what Guido
proposed in his blog, though you don't provide the name of the
argument, but the name of the class. Then you just precede attributes
with a '.', which is 4 letters less than self. And, well, this rocks
;-)

It is really not a problem to type 4 letters (well, six with a coma
and a space) in the signature, but it takes a lot of time to type all
those selfs inside the function's body. So I was thinking, if this
issue could be raised too, when new self syntax is proposed. Simple
example looks like this:

class bar:

   def bar.foo():
      .x = 5

This could really save a lot of code, while attributes are still
easily distinguishable.

-- 
Filip Gruszczyński