[Python-Dev] Monkeypatching idioms -- elegant or ugly? (original) (raw)

Stephen J. Turnbull stephen at xemacs.org
Tue Jan 15 21:43:33 CET 2008

Guido van Rossum writes:

I think it's useful to share these recipes,

But only to people who have demonstrated that they already know when, why and how to monkeypatch on their own. Lisp's `defadvice' plays a starring role in a number of my nightmares. Most recently, 15 minutes ago.

Come to think of it, `defadvice' does have the advantage that it also automatically monkeypatches the docstring to say "This function has advice", and with a little cooperation from the advisor can also provide documentation of the changed semantics.

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list