object.enable() anti-pattern

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 4:59 AM, Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> wrote:
> It's not hard to imagine a
> file class which could be used like:
>
> f = file("/path/to/my/file")
> f.delete()
>
> That would be a totally different model from the current python file
> object.  And then there would be plenty of things you might want to do
> to a file other than open it...
>
> file("/path/to/my/directory").chdir()
> file("/dev/sdf").mount("/var/lib/whatever")
> file("/mnt/swapfile").swapon()

Sure, you can imagine it. But what does it do that can't be done with
a moduleful of flat functions accepting strings? This makes sense in
Java, I guess, but why do it in Python?

ChrisA