[Python-Dev] slots, properties, descriptors, and pydoc (original) (raw)

John Belmonte john at neggie.net
Sun Apr 18 22:29:08 EDT 2004

Guido van Rossum wrote:

Anything can be done using metaclasses. slots is not special once the class exists -- it is a set of instructions for the default metaclass to create a specific set of descriptors (and associated storage). Another metaclass could use a different convention (although it may have to set slots to let the base metaclass create the associated storage slots).

My original proposal was to use slots dict values for docstrings in the default metaclass. You said you'd rather not do that because different metaclasses may want to use the dict value for different purposes. But from what you've explained, metaclasses are free to interpret the value of slots in any way they choose. Metaclasses built on top of the default metaclass could translate their slots value to the slots I proposed.

Are optional tuples any better? This wouldn't preclude use of dict values for something else.

class Foo(object): slots = [ 'slot1', ('slot2', 'description'), ('slot3', """description ...continued"""), ]

-John

-- http:// if ile.org/

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