[Python-Dev] Should we do away with unbound methods in Py3k? (original) (raw)

Greg Ewing greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz
Sat Nov 24 23:55:38 CET 2007

André Malo wrote:

* Greg Ewing wrote:

> But you could just as well wrap > it in a function that takes self and discards it,

I always thought, that this is exactly what staticmethod does.

Not quite -- staticmethod prevents a self from getting passed in the first place, so there's no need to discard it. Which is probably slightly more efficient, but if unbound methods had never been invented in the first place, I doubt that staticmethod would have been created just for that reason.

The other thing about staticmethod is that it makes it possible to call the method via either a class or an instance, but I've never found a real need for that in anything I've written or seen.

-- Greg

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list