[Python-Dev] Wrappers and keywords (original) (raw)

"Martin v. L�wis" martin@v.loewis.de
Thu, 17 Apr 2003 22:12:19 +0200

David LeBlanc wrote:

I am curious to know why the, what seems to me kludgy, "def x(): pass x = (static|class)method(x)" syntax was chosen over a simple "staticdef x ():..." or "classdef x ():..." def specialization syntax?

That syntax hasn't been chosen yet; syntactic sugar for static and class methods, properties, slots, and other object types is still an area of ongoing research.

The current implementation was created since it did not need an extension to the syntax:

x=staticmethod(x)

was syntactically correct even in Python 1.2 (which is the oldest Python version I remember).

There have been numerous proposals on what the syntactic sugar should look like, which is one reason why no specific solution has been implemented yet. Proposals get usually discredit if they require introduction of new keywords, like "staticdef". The current favorite proposals is to write

def x() [static]: pass

or perhaps

def x() [staticmethod]: pass

In that proposal, static(method) would not be a keyword, but would be an identifier (denoting the same thing that staticmethod currently denotes). This syntax nicely extends to

def x() [threading.synchronized, xmlrpclib.webmethod]: pass

The syntax has the disadvantage of not applying nicely to slots.

Regards, Martin