[Python-Dev] Re: Int FutureWarnings and other 2.4 TODOs (original) (raw)

Michael Chermside mcherm at mcherm.com
Thu Dec 4 09:08:29 EST 2003

Guido writes:

Hmm... I'm not very familiar with the Bridge pattern (and my GoF book is on one of 65 boxes still in the garage waiting until we move into a larger house :-). Can you give a little more detail about how this would be done?

If I understand it properly (and I DID check my copy of GOF which isn't packed ), it may be better recognized by its alternative name: "Handle/Body". The basic idea is to add a level of indirection... the GOF name the "front" object the "Abstraction" and the "back" object the "Implementor".

And it seems like a poor choice for implementing ints, which by definition should be designed for the minimum possible overhead, unless that "front" object can be made VERY lightweight. (Hmm... to avoid cache effects we might want to store the "abstraction" adjacent in memory to the "implementor". And if we did THAT we might even be able to dispense with even a pointer in the "abstraction". But now I've talked myself out of the bridge pattern into something more like just having two separate types... really 3 now, since there's a third layout needed to handle user-designed int subclasses. I still don't like it.)

-- Michael Chermside

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