[Tutor] easy way to populate a dict with functions

[Albert-Jan Roskam]

Hi Bob,

Sorry for the late reply, but thank you for your code. I still haven't completely wrappped my brain around decorator functions, but thanks to your reply at least now my frontal lobe is touching it. ;-)

Re: the ordering of functions: I thought it mattered because the inspect module returns a list of two-tuples (in this case, a list of four two-tuples). Therefore, e.g. option #1 should always cause the same function to be run. But apparently I'm wrong here somewhere.

Best wishes,
Albert-Jan
Netherlands 

--- On Thu, 8/6/09, bob gailer <bgailer at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: bob gailer <bgailer at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Tutor] easy way to populate a dict with functions
> To: "Albert-Jan Roskam" <fomcl at yahoo.com>
> Cc: "tutorpythonmailinglist Python" <tutor at python.org>
> Date: Thursday, August 6, 2009, 10:20 PM
> Albert-Jan Roskam wrote:
> > Hi Bob,
> > 
> > Very neat solution, thanks a lot! I didn't know the
> inspect module, but it's just what's needed here. Cool! 
> 
> Great.
> 
> Regarding the ordering of functions in the list - variable
> names in namespaces (such as modules) are stored in
> dictionaries. Any ordering is lost in this process. Why is
> order important to you here?
> 
> There are other things that could be said about your
> program and my revision.
> 
> 1 - it is better to have functions return values and have
> the main program decide whether to print them or take some
> other action. (Also note you were not consistent - foo
> returns the others print!)
> 
> 2 - since the list contains the function names as well as
> references to the functions you could present the names to
> the user. You could even ask the user to enter the first
> letter(s) of the names instead of a number.
> 
> 3 - with a slight enhancement to things you can preserve
> the order:
> 
> # -------- commands.py ---------------
> cmds = [] 
> def collect(func):
>  'a "decorator" that adds each function to the cmds list'
>  cmds.append((func.__name__, func))
> 
> @collect
> def foo (a):
> return "foo" * a
> 
> @collect
> def bletch (q):
> for i in range(20):
>   return i * q
> 
> @collect
> def stilton (n):
> return "yes sir, " * n
> 
> @collect
> def romans (z):
> return "what have the romans really done for us?\n" * z
> 
> # -------- end code ---------------
> 
> # -------- main.py ---------------
> import commands
> cmds = commands.cmds
> 
> # etc.
> 
> -- Bob Gailer
> Chapel Hill NC
> 919-636-4239
>