[Python-3000] Metaclasses in Py3K (original) (raw)

Phillip J. Eby pje at telecommunity.com
Tue Dec 12 20:17:15 CET 2006

At 11:07 AM 12/12/2006 -0800, Thomas Wouters wrote:

I do wonder why classes don't use fast locals, though.

Because fast locals were an optimization added for functions. Before that, there was no such thing as fast locals: everything used dictionaries.

Building the locals dict from the fast locals at the end of the class suite execution seems more logical to me than what happens now...

Well, code that does things like this:

 def some_func(an_ob, whatever):
     ...


 class Foo:
     some_func = some_func

Wouldn't work any more if you switched to fast locals. Whether you consider that a good thing or a bad thing depends on your perspective, I suppose. Some people complain that the above pattern doesn't work in functions, due to the existence of fast locals. (I'm not one of them, however.)

More information about the Python-3000 mailing list