global, globals(), _global ?
robert
no-spam at no-spam-no-spam.com
Wed Mar 15 06:51:57 EST 2006
Xaver Hinterhuber wrote:
> Hi Robert,
>
> I was using global variables some time ago, too.
> But with the time the program simply got unmaintainable, because it is very
> hard
> to trace, why a global variable has some special value and not the one, you
> thought it should have.
> So I redesigned the program and now I can do it without global variables.
>
> To me global variables are now in most cases a sign of bad design.
> Is there no other way to do it?
Yes, one should put common _application_ variables of importance to
config instances or data-modules/classes etc.
Yet globals variables in Python are anyway "module commons". That is a
frequent practical need.
Grep e.g. the python standard modules for use of global variables and
use of "global "
There are many practical module globals, which control e.g. the mode of
a module, store precomputed/cached stuff etc., and where you do not open
an extra data structure (for now).
Most variable read-s in Python anyway go to module globals - as there
are no other kinds of namespaces except __builtins__
( And that later scheme is fairly wonderful - compare for example the
namespace fuzz in C/C++, Pascal, Ruby, ... where you never know which
module file addeds what to which namespace;
In Ruby they even scribble from anywhere to _any_ class _and_ any
namespace without the barrier of a dot or subclassing or anything -
using somehow by random the same name already joins!? A threat for good
modularization of code. Not far from free flat memory programming :-)
Don't know how they keep bigger projects managable in this language.
)
Yet, python module globals are set with this strange fragmented "global
name ; name=..".
But the common storage object in question is an ordinary module anyway.
Why not stay self-similiar and use it as such in dot-syntax for write-s
(and often for read-s in places, where you want to express the use of a
special global explicitly in order to not confuse things with locals,
and want to maintain the code readable.
Robert
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