[Python-Dev] PEP 285, inheritance reversed (original) (raw)

Scott Gilbert xscottg@yahoo.com
Fri, 15 Mar 2002 13🔞47 -0800 (PST)

Being a newbie on this list, I was hoping to keep my mouth shut a little longer and just wait to see how your discussions rounded out, but since the topic seems to have died, I figure I'll make my say:

Isn't the inheritance between bool and int backwards?

ints can be used as bools longs can be used as bools floats can be used as bools lists can be used as bools dicts can be used as bools strings can be used as bools etc... can be used as bools

bools can't be promoted to dicts bools can't be promoted to lists bools can be promoted to ints, longs, floats, and strings, (and a few others) but only in a limited way.

In some OO fashion, doesn't all of this imply that ints, longs, lists, dicts, strings, ... should derive from bool instead of bool deriving from int? Then bool implements int, long, str, repr, or the C extension equivalent to promote where needed?

I suppose that breaks anything that assumes int, long, str, dict, list derive from object directly though... Otherwise does it cause a problem?

Ok. I'll go back to being quiet for a bit.

Cheers, -Scott

ps: The intro to the list said I should introduce myself... I'm a software engineer living and working in Tucson, Arizona. The company I work for has started using Python in a larger and larger capacity for digital signal processing and other misc scientific computing. I've followed the language for 3-4 of years now.

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