[Python-Dev] Definining properties - a use case for class decorators? (original) (raw)

Steven Bethard steven.bethard at gmail.com
Tue Oct 18 06:46:12 CEST 2005

Barry Warsaw wrote:

On Mon, 2005-10-17 at 21:55, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> Let's change the property built-in so that its arguments can be either > functions or strings (or None). If they are functions or None, it > behaves exactly like it always has. > > If an argument is a string, it should be a method name, and the method > is looked up by that name each time the property is used. Because this > is late binding, it can be put before the method definitions, and a > subclass can override the methods. Example: > > class C: > > foo = property('getFoo', 'setFoo', None, 'the foo property') > > def getFoo(self): > return self.foo > > def setFoo(self, foo): > self.foo = foo > > What do you think? Ick, for all the reasons that strings are less appealing than names.

I'm not sure if you'll like it any better, but I combined Michael Urman's suggestion with my late-binding property recipe to get: http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/442418 It solves the name-repetition problem and the late-binding problem (I believe), at the cost of either adding an extra argument to the functions forming the property or confusing the "self" argument a little.

STeVe

You can wordify anything if you just verb it. --- Bucky Katt, Get Fuzzy

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list