[Python-Dev] PEP 318 restrictions on elements (original) (raw)

[Python-Dev] PEP 318 - generality of list; restrictions on elements

Aahz aahz at pythoncraft.com
Wed Mar 10 10:31:26 EST 2004

On Wed, Mar 10, 2004, Guido van Rossum wrote:

Aahz:

Someone:

I'd be very surprised if the interpreter cared that a decorator returned a callable; what should it care? The interpreter doesn't care; people care. That's precisely why it should be a documented requirement. So decorators couldn't be used to create read-only properties?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something. I thought that a property contains a get descriptor, which makes it a kind of callable. Read-only properties contain a set descriptor that either does nothing or raises an exception. That doesn't affect whether the property is classified as a callable.

Also, I thought we had explicitly punted on allowing decorators to create properties because the syntax wasn't sufficiently flexible without contortions.

Aahz (aahz at pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/

"Do not taunt happy fun for loops. Do not change lists you are looping over." --Remco Gerlich, comp.lang.python

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