[Python-Dev] Issue10403 - using 'attributes' instead of members in documentation (original) (raw)

Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Tue Jun 28 00:05:33 CEST 2011

On 6/27/2011 5:42 AM, Michael Foord wrote:

On 27/06/2011 09:24, Antoine Pitrou wrote:

FWIW, I tend to understand "members" as "methods + attributes", which makes it a nice term to use for that purpose. That is my understanding / use of the terms as well.

On 6/27/2011 5:45 AM, Oleg Broytman wrote:

That's my feeling too.

Whereas the actual existing usage is that attributes = members + methods. 'Member' came from 'member of a data structure', as in complex numbers have real and imag members, whereas lists have methods but no (user visible) members.

The fact that so many people get the Python usage of 'member' so wrong is a good reason to retire it.

-- Terry Jan Reedy

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