[Python-Dev] pep-0557 dataclasses top level module vs part of collections? (original) (raw)

Gregory P. Smith greg at krypto.org
Fri Dec 22 14:59:27 EST 2017

On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 10:47 PM Raymond Hettinger < raymond.hettinger at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Dec 21, 2017, at 3:21 PM, Gregory P. Smith <greg at krypto.org> wrote: > > It seems a suggested use is "from dataclasses import dataclass" > > But people are already familiar with "from collections import namedtuple" which suggests to me that "from collections import dataclass" would be a more natural sounding API addition. This might make sense if it were a single self contained function. But dataclasses are their own little ecosystem that warrants its own module namespace: >>> import dataclasses >>> dataclasses.all ['dataclass', 'field', 'FrozenInstanceError', 'InitVar', 'fields', 'asdict', 'astuple', 'makedataclass', 'replace'] Also, remember that dataclasses have a dual role as a data holder (which is collection-like) and as a generator of boilerplate code (which is more like functools.totalordering). I support Eric's decision to make this a separate module.

sounds good. lets leave it that way. dataclasses it is.

if we were further along in figuring out how to remove the distinction between a class and a module as a namespace I'd suggest the module name itself be dataclass with a call method so that the module could be the decorator so we could avoid the antipattern of importing a name from a module into your local namespace. but we're not, so we can't. :)

-gps

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