[Python-Dev] Re: Call for defense of @decorators (original) (raw)

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Mon Aug 9 08:14:22 CEST 2004

Christian Tismer wrote:

What I added was yet another stuff entry for new-style classes. It may also appear on module level, like the metaclass feature works.

While this "works", I still think it is a bad idea, for two reasons:

  1. It only helps the parser, A human reader would have to scroll to the top of the class (or worse, to the top of the module) to find out.
  2. For the author, it is redundant typing - the author knows this is a decorator, so having to type this again in full is redundant. 1 and 2 together make this a write-only syntax.
  3. It means that the parser has to recognize decorators This is not often the case; I believe the only other exception is future (which I also dislike, despite its cuteness). [As any good list of 2 reasons, this list of course has 3]

But it provides a solution without enforcing us to decide about new syntax right now, which appears to be too early for a group that can't find a common denominator, yet.

There is a solution already: put the function wrappers after the declaration. The goal of this change is specifically to come up with a syntax. If no syntax could be find, it would be best not to change anything.

I'm not worried that the group cannot agree on syntax: people can never agree on syntax, not just in the case of Python. If you wait for agreement, you wait forever.

For my purposes it works fine, but I don't claim that it fulfils all other desired use cases. At least it is compatible, simple, complete, implemented in a way, and works for my applications.

It's not any more compatbible than the 2.4a2 approach:

Regards, Martin

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