[Python-Dev] Re: Re: Call for defense of @decorators (original) (raw)

Skip Montanaro skip at pobox.com
Tue Aug 10 14:56:27 CEST 2004 

>> I think "adorn" would make a better keyword in that case, as in
>> "adorn with" this decorator the method foo.

Bob> I don't think that's appropriate at all.  Most decorators are
Bob> transformations that change the function object into something else
Bob> entirely, most likely by wrapping it but quite possibly not.

Correctamundo. In fact, there's no need that the decorator return a function (or callable) object at all. You could define a function to compute a lookup table of some sort. The decorator might simply invoke the function and return its value. Perfectly legal. Slightly more than adornment. Somewhat silly example:

def define(func):
    return func()

@ define
def grayscale():
    table = []
    for i in range(256):
        table.append((i,i,i))
    return table

Skip

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